


The Burning

by SrebrnaFH



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU of Reichenbach Fall, Aftermath of Torture, Angst, BAMF!John, Character Death, Depression, Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Fake Character Death, HEA, Hallucinations, Heart-to-Heart, Hospitalization, Hospitals, Hurt John, Hurt John Watson, Hurt Sherlock, Illnesses, Implied/Referenced Torture, John is Smarter than he looks, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, MI6, Manipulative Mycroft, Marriage Proposal, Molly is smarter than she looks, Mycroft Being a Good Brother, Physical Therapy, Reconciliation, Rescue Mission, Reverse Reichenbach, Separation, Sherlock To The Rescue, Suicide, heaps of angst, pop culture references, spoilers in the tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-06-05 03:04:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 24
Words: 60,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15161117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SrebrnaFH/pseuds/SrebrnaFH
Summary: Something went very, very wrong.John had seemed, if not happy, then reasonably content with his life.Sherlock had never predicted something like THIS might have happened. Not in his worst nightmares.He was the lousiest friend ever, apparently.At least Mycroft found him something to occupy his mind with, so that he didn't have to go back to 221B and stare at the walls and the chair, where John Watson would never sit again.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm posting this before I finished An Average Man, but I simply wanted to see if it generates some response.  
> The other story will be finished, should be done by the end of July, so don't worry.  
> This one is 9 chapters (maybe I'll make it 10, to divide the content evenly), will total about 20k words.  
> Edit, after posting chapter 12: Yeah. 35k and counting, 18 chapters. As usual, my characters got away from me.

"He wasn't depressed" he stated bleakly. "It's impossible."

"It's not your fault" Molly soothed. "It's... he... it happens, you know that."

He shook his head in denial and sniffed.

"Impossible. I would have noticed. It's my job, to notice such things."

"John... he, he was..." she shrugged. "Maybe something happened recently? Something new that might have triggered an episode...?"

He combed back his hair and bit into a knuckle.

"No. Nothing out of ordinary. Cases. Moriarty, of course. Experiments. Mycroft coming by. I can't think, Molly. I can't think. I don't _understand_. Is this what everyone feels? It's terrible...!"

"Shh" Molly caught his hand and held him immobile for a moment, as if she was afraid he would come apart in the stress. He felt quite ready to, actually. "This happens. I don't understand it myself, but apparently there was something... that pushed him. But it wasn't you. I'm sure it wasn't _you_. You were his best friend."

He looked at her in anguish.

"What kind of best friend doesn't notice his flatmate being depressive enough to... to do _that_? I can't... I can't, my brain isn't working. I can't!" he pressed his forehead with both hands. "It's like my brain is drowning in tar!"

Molly sniffed and let go of him, wiping her own nose with a paper towel.

"It's worrying me" she said finally. "They have excluded us from the examination, and we are the ones who would know best what he was like. You'd be able to notice other things, if there was something he did differently today, and I _am_ the main medical examiner!"

"I'm afraid your close involvement with _him_ would be the exact reason you were excluded, doctor Hooper" a low, slightly nasal voice interrupted them. Molly almost spilt the coffee on her lab coat, but he never even moved.

"Go away" he said tiredly. "I know why we were excluded."

"No, actually, you don't" Mycroft's voice sharpened. "You were excluded because he had been..." he swallowed. Audibly.

A new response, interesting.

"What is going on, Mr Holmes?" Molly stepped up to him, measuring him up in suspicion.

"I think I can safely say he wouldn't have wanted his friends to see him thus" the older man finally said. "You two especially."

They looked at each other in, actually, slight surprise.

"I must see him" the he stood up and walked up to Mycroft. "I have to. This is..."

"This is impossible, brother mine" he heard. "John... You saw John before they picked him up. It seems there are more pieces of a human that can break than I've ever expected."

"Mycroft, what are you implying?"

"I'm not implying _anything_ , I'm saying that his will not be an open-casket funeral."

"Mr Holmes..."

"Also, none of you two is appointed as his contact, so you can't go in there under the guise of familial responsibility."

"Oh God" Molly gasped. "Someone has to contact Harry... Do we even have her number?"

He actually snorted.

"Mycroft has it" he pointed out.

"And I have notified her that everything will be done and she doesn't have to worry. She is only three months out of the last stint in rehab, little brother. I hope you understand that it wouldn't do to worry her unduly. Her situation is bad as it is already."

Molly frowned, looking at them both.

"So who was John's emergency contact?" she asked finally. "Not me, not Sherlock, then who, Mike Stamford?"

He felt a little lightbulb go on over the sea of tar that blocked his thoughts.

"Mycroft" he answered tersely. "John put _Mycroft_ as his emergency contact."

"But why not you?" she turned between them in astonishment.

"After the last time _both_ of them had landed themselves in A &E and I had to bully the doctors not to bother Harriet in the middle of the night, I suggested to John that he should change the documents - then in any case I would be there for both of them, and even if it was only one of them who was hurt, well, we already know how _that_ works out, don't we? They were both rather useless."

"Mycroft" he growled. "Use your considerable power and let us in there."

He saw his brother wrap his fingers more tightly around the handle of his umbrella.

"Sherlock, this would be a very bad idea" he said finally. "John... The damage was substantial. The examiner - I'm sorry, doctor Hooper, but I really think doctor Watson wouldn't want someone he liked to see him..." he waved. "In that state."

"How would you know anything about what John wanted or not?" Sherlock snapped finally. "How the hell do you know _anything_ about John Watson?"

Mycroft's eyes suddenly narrowed.

"I've spent more time with the man than you can guess, Sherlock. Each time you got yourself admitted to a hospital, we were there. Who made sure _he_ ate when you were not there to be taken care of? Do you have any idea how much John Watson shut down when you were not around? The last time you got stabbed and had to be kept in sterile room, they didn't let any of us in. I took him home and..." the older man shrugged. "He trusted me with a few things. When he showed me the paperwork, he made w few requests. If you wish, I can let you read them. One was, probably something from his Army life, that should he sustain a thoroughly damaging injury, something that would not only kill him but also make him look... less than he was, I was to arrange it in such a way that nobody would see him in that state, except for required medical professionals. So yes, I know what John Watson wanted, brother mine. He would have wanted you to remember him as he used to be and not as he is right now."

_Thoroughly damaging._

_Less than he was._

_Substantial._

Sherlock steeled himself against these words pounding on his skull.

"How bad?" he heard Molly ask.

"At that speed, human body..." Mycroft paused. "There is not enough for a reconstructive specialist to work on. They are mostly taking samples now, to ensure doctor Watson was not under influence of any substances or was not forced to do this by someone with him, up on..."

"Of course he wasn't" Sherlock scoffed. "I _saw_ him."

And then it hit him yet again.

 

####

 

_"Sherlock, stay exactly where you are" John's voice was steady, but slightly high, as it tended to get in moments of stress. "Please, do it for me. Do this one thing for me. For once,_ _**listen** _ _."_

_"John, what are you doing up there?"_

_"I'm doing the best thing I can, in this situation. This call... this call is my note, Sherlock. I'm so, so sorry. But people leave a note in these circumstances, and I, well, you know me, everything has to be done properly. So please, listen and stay where you are."_

_"John, you don't have to do this" he heard pleading in his own tone. Pleading, him, Sherlock Holmes. "John, wait, let me go up there, I want..."_

_"No, Sherlock. This is not about what you want anymore. This is what I must do. I can't go on like this anymore. I can't just... stand in place and watch life happen around me. Everyone is moving, changing, going somewhere, and I'm just stuck..."_

_"John, please, no. You are my rock, my... My safe place" he heard the tears in his voice. "I can't go on without you. I can't... I don't know what I'll do without you."_

_"You have others, Sherlock. I'm too tired. I'm too worn out. You don't really need_ _**me** _ _, you need someone who will follow you around and tell you how great you are. I could probably record a few sample clips on your phone so you could play them when the mood is right and you'd never notice I was gone."_

_His heart constricted and he watched the stocky, dependable figure of his friend - his best friend - his only friend - on the edge of the roof._

_"John, please, don't do this. It's not... It's not like this! I could never find someone who can replace you!"_

_He saw John turn towards him and give a minuscule shrug._

_"We both know it's not true" he said quietly. "You don't need me, and you never did. You don't need my medical expertise, my help, my so-called assistance. You make fun of what I write, you ridicule every attempt at helping you with your daily life, you ignore my suggestions. You never acknowledge even these rare moments when I_ _**am** _ _right. I'm less of use to you than your chair, or the skull. At least they don't bother you with requests to feed yourself. Well, now you'll be free to indulge in all your favourite pursuits. Nobody to tell you off for melting the kitchen floor, nobody to complain when you shoot the wall - ah, wait, no. You have Mrs Hudson for this. And your brother will pick up whatever is left of you when you overdose on some nice new drug. And Lestrade will be there to watch you deduct the world away. So, you see, you don't need me. I'm convenient. I'm just that guy that you can leave behind when you're in a hurry and he will still come back. The guy you can poison, drug and experiment on, because apparently he can't stand up for himself. Well, no more, Sherlock. I'm standing up for myself in the only way I have. I'm leaving. Permanently. I know you don't really respect anything I say, but I need you to do this one last thing for me._ _**Stay exactly where you are** _ _."_

_A soft "beep" told him the conversation was done and John made a small throw-away gesture to the side, probably tossing the phone. Then the far-up parka-clad figure stood on the ledge and pushed away._

_"JOHN!"_

_He felt his heart stop. He had always heard people describe this, but had never believed them. Now he could. He could relate to people who had something so bad happen to them that they couldn't live anymore._

_He was supposed to live without John, apparently._

_He was supposed to survive this._

_There was a body on the pavement._

_"Please, let me through" he begged the people around him. "Let me through, I'm his..." his voice faltered. What kind of right did he have to John? A flatmate? A co-worker? A partner?_

_A friend?_

_What kind of friend allows the other to do something like this?_

_He should have talked John down. He could. He knew how police did it, he had done it a few times before._

_He just had never imagined he would have been forced to use this knowledge on John._

_Of all the experiments, physical and psychological, that he had ever done on John, this was one that had never been even considered. He knew about John's service weapon..._

_He staggered._

_Why didn't John use his gun?_

_Answer: It would have been at home and a) Sherlock could have just taken it away from him; b) it would have forced Mrs Hudson to clean it later. John was nothing if not considerate. He would have never put their housekeeper - landlady - in a position to have to pick up after him._

_"Let me..." his voice faltered as he saw someone in scrubs and equipped with a stretcher. "Let..."_


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some facts come into the light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, someone subscribed, this gives me hope.

"There was nobody on the roof with John. I saw him on the ledge, I saw him walking around earlier. I saw him. He was talking on his phone and then he called me. And there was nobody else up there with him."

"Snipers" Molly piped up. "Someone could have been targeting him. That might have been the previous call."

"And committing a painful suicide would have been preferable to the bullet?" Mycroft asked with slight disbelief. "I'd take a bullet - there was always a chance to survive it. He had, once. That shoulder of his must have been fun on the airports, I suppose. So he already knew that even a sniper's bullet doesn't have to kill you."

"So you are saying he..." Molly swallowed. "He _wanted_ to do this?"

"Don't be stupid, Molly" Sherlock scoffed, half-heartedly. "Nobody _wants_ to kill themselves, not really."

"Sometimes death is just the better of bad options" Mycroft said calmly, looking at Sherlock icily. "Sometimes someone's life feels so painful, they escape into drugs. Others drink. And yet others simply decide to remove themselves from this world, because they had tried or seen others try the alternatives and they don't see any other way out."

At first, Mycroft's words didn't register. He tended to file his brother's nagging away and focus on more important things. But Molly apparently listened.

"How can you say things like this!" she stood up to the tall man. "How can you imply...! John wouldn't do this! He wasn't in pain, or whatever it is that you think..."

"I _know_ " Mycroft corrected coldly. "I have seen his medical documentation. I needed to know what I was dealing with, in case I was called on to make decisions. Have you ever checked into the credentials of his therapist, brother? I have. And I suggested he transferred to someone else immediately. Apparently the woman was less then proficient in dealing with actual PTSD sufferers. Not to mention her inability to understand someone's need for specific types of activity. Have you noticed she had never had a positive word to say about his ability to cope? She had reinforced his feeling of uselessness in the civilian world."

"When..." he had to swallow again. "When did you check it?"

"Last week. He had his first session with the new doctor scheduled for tomorrow. Apparently, I was also too late for John Watson, just like so many others before me. I admit, I only intervened because he said something - he quoted her, and it made me suspicious. She probably had the best intentions, but she treated him like a run-of-the-mill case of PTSD and _fear_ of danger."

Molly's eyes turned round and big as she looked up at both of them in dismay.

"Mycroft, stop trying to be maudlin. It doesn't suit you."

His brother shrugged.

"I am only telling the truth. The army was late when recovering captain Watson from the ambushed camp. The surgeons in the hospital were late in identifying that his wound had gone septic - did you know how limited his movement was, brother? He could barely raise his hand over his shoulder. It was a miracle he could still shoot - and his luck he had learnt shooting one-handed with his right. The psychologists was late identifying the scale of his PTSD. The therapist, well, the less we say about her, the better. Apparently someone in the army had managed to fumble his personnel file and some of his decorations got... misplaced. Thus rendering him unable to support himself. And then someone in the finance department managed to compound that mistake by assigning him to a lower tier of payments, making it a wonder he could even pay for that dismal bedsit. He had been earning combat pay for more than a half of his deployment, but that got somehow messed up, too..."

He had noticed, yes. John had been economising on everything. At the beginning he had thought his flatmate was simply stingy - the outcome of a childhood spent in a home where most money went into the nearest off licence. Then he thought John must be saving up for something. After all, the army had very strict rules, a veteran should be coming back home with reasonable funds to live a satisfactory, if not very luxurious life.

Then he thought John must have lost most of his money in various entertaining pursuits during his stay on multiple bases during his deployments. He swallowed the shame of that suspicion and closed his eyes to stop the treacherous tears.

"They held back his pay because they put him in the wrong category?" Molly sounded more worried than the topic warranted. "That's why he asked if there were any hours he could pick at the hospital, even at the A&E..."

"He never mentioned it" Sherlock would have remembered _that_. It must have been one of these days when John came back from the surgery rather late and was in a particularly awful mood.

"Well, they told him he is not reliable enough to be on call, because he keeps running after you" she wrung her hands. "That unless he could guarantee availability every other night and during the weekends, they won't bother putting him on the roster, because they need a doctor and not another phone number that isn't answered when needed."

"I..." he swallowed. "He never told me."

"You were his all-knowing best friend, little brother" Mycroft smiled and Sherlock had to control the impulse to hit him square in the face. "He was probably ashamed he couldn't pay his part of the bills."

"I gave him my card" he said absently. "Told him to..."

"You basically told him to take your money, Sherlock, for living with you" Mycroft shook his head slowly, as if in wonder. "He was a grown man. He _needed_ to be self-sufficient. You didn't allow him to."

His thoughts slowed down. There was nothing but the feeling of something sucking him in, something more terrifying than any drug he had ever experimented with. The black tar that had suffused his mind came back again, blocking him from processing the information.

"How could you!" he heard Molly turn on his brother. "How can you say such things! He had just lost his best friend! How can you say such things to your own brother!? He didn't do anything of the kind!"

He tried to stop her, to explain that Mycroft was actually, painfully _right_ this time.

"Imagine, doctor Hooper, a woman. Trying to work on her own, trying to have a career, despite the way the world is slanted against her. And imagine her finding a partner, who on one hand demands her to be available for various pursuits, takes most of her time and makes her life barely sustainable, but on the other, is so fascinating she can't force herself to leave him. Imagine him cutting her off from the ability to earn her own money and then him handing her _his_ money - the amount of which she doesn't know and will have no control over, should she go shopping."

He heard Molly gasp, but he could only press his knuckles harder into his eyes.

"And now replace that woman with an invalided army doctor with an unhealthy penchant for danger."

"Stop it" he managed to growl. "STOP IT, MYCROFT."

He felt useless. His brain was useless, his whole body was barely functioning, he craved a cigarette and tea.

He wanted John.

There was nothing more important than seeing John again.

But there was no more John, because John had stepped of the ledge of the St Bart's hospital roof that very morning, as witnessed by several dozens of bystanders and one useless consulting detective.

There would be no more toast and tea in the mornings, nobody would know which honey it was supposed to be, which milk and which hand soap. There would be no more telly. No more silly popculture references. No more cookies he never asked for but somehow always filched from John's plate.

Because there was no more John.

A door opened in the distance with a crack and Anthea was walking down the corridor, an unusual haste in her step.

"Sir, there is... a recording."

 

#

 

Someone had hacked into several of the broadcasting networks' servers and uploaded a simple, only slightly edited clip. It was John, sitting in some nondescript place, against an anonymous wall, saying things that cut Sherlock to the bone.

"...not sure he does have one... You can watch him from a distance... has the best success rate... how special he is. Day to day. Minute by minute. Nobody knows it better than me... ...I feel under-appreciated? That I'm just treated like some poor quality sidekick with no own thought in his head? That I'm _bone tired_ of managing someone else's bloody life? Well, I am. That's why I'm doing this... that should do it... he is, actually, a bloody machine with no emotions... so, what difference does it make? At least I'll be able to get some rest."

Molly was holding his hands all that time, squeezing his fingers almost until he lost feeling in them.

He hadn't felt so shaken since the last days at his secondary school, when the other boys finally gave in to their natural instinct and decided to deal with the 'stranger' in their class by repeatedly throwing him up and down in between two blankets. So-called "sandwich" torture, after which the most common reaction is throwing up on oneself when still wrapped in said blankets.

He was quite ready to be very very sick right then and there.

"This has to be a fabrication" he finally said, feeling a bit faint. "I need access to this recording. I need to take it apart, to see where it was made. I _need_ \--!"

He needed John. He needed to hear that one sentence, one sentence in each of their cases - one remark that always put him on the right track, that guided him to the discovery. John's "Why didn't they..." or "Actually, why glass?" or even "This sure looks like a suicide".

This looked like a suicide, for sure.

"There are specialists already on it, brother mine. While you may be an expert on deductions, you are _not_ a proficient hacker. Your insistence on guessing doctor Watson's laptop password notwithstanding, I do have actual professionals dealing with it. You will have the stills once they are extracted."

Every time Mycroft mentioned John it felt like a stab to his gut yet again. But he could work with this. He could stand his brother's little jabs of so-called humour. This would buy him access to the resources he needed.

 

#

 

The stills told him nothing. The wall held no hints. The camera was a webcam of some kind, like thousands out there. John was... John. Not angry. Not happy. Not sleepy. Not agitated. The shirt he wore was quickly identified as the same as he had worn on Monday. Three days before the...

There was nothing to work from.

The electronic trace died when a diligent police officer fished a mobile out of a trashcan next to a McDonalds from which the file was sent. The mobile was a perfectly new, unused specimen that contained only the file itself and some seemingly randomly chosen software, ranging from a 2048 offshot made with cute dogs to two actual hacker applications that had been used to place the file on the chosen servers. No fingerprints were recovered and even Sherlock couldn't find anything on it.

"Too new" he said with disgust. "Where was it bought?"

"Stolen, actually. We've traced the serial number and, officially, it hadn't left the shelf of the local electronics store."

"Surveillance?"

"We'd need all two weeks of it, since the last inventory."

"I can watch it" he said, grinding his teeth.

"I will give you access to the set from Sunday."

He didn't thank Mycroft, but he distinctly heard "Ta, we appreciate it" said in John's voice.

_Shut up, John._

_No--!_

_I'm so sorry, John. I'm so sorry._

_I'll be better to Mycroft, I promise._

_Will it make you come back?_

_John?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. What now?


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock gets a new job and Mycroft gets a present.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still not 100% sure where it's going to end up - I have 12 chapters right now, with an epilogue of sorts written... But my characters tend to have their own mind, so who knows what they will come up with.  
> Let me know what you think.  
> (also, if I managed to butcher UK English somewhere with a brutal Americanism, let me know, please)

"Sherlock."

By the tone of Mycroft's voice, he must have repeated his name several times before Sherlock noticed, so intent he was on the small screen in front of him. Analysis of yet another set of CCTV recordings, some other store, where another piece of equipment had been stolen from. This time a pendrive on which the file had been stored - the object itself having been mailed to the Yard, actually, wiped clean of everything but one thumbnail print apparently belonging to a dead man. "I need your input on another matter."

"No."

It had been ten days since John's death and he had made _no progress_.

"This is about Moriarty" Mycroft's face was twisted in an extreme distaste as he chewed the next sentence. "I have an operative working on his network - we've caught the first contacts here in London, but we need to follow it now. I'll need you..."

"I can't leave London" he said immediately.

He couldn't. Not until he explained what had happened to John. Because it was _impossible_ John was simply depressive and wishing out of... whatever it was that they had.

He couldn't stop thinking of the way Mycroft had summed up their relationship to Molly, with him as the manipulating and controlling bastard of a husband and John as the timid, submissive wife, too fascinated with the brute to oppose him.

_Lord, no. Why, why, why. It wasn't like this. I wasn't that person. I may be a sociopath, but I am not... THAT._

He needed to review this all. He needed a few hours of his Mind Palace. He needed to check all his interactions with John in the light of the new knowledge he had gained.

Much too late.

Just like everyone was always too late for John Watson.

"You wouldn't have to. There will be reports coming. The man I've sent is... proficient, but he will need to focus on the tasks at hand, mostly his own survival. It will be your task to analyse whatever he finds out and create the bigger picture and find the links that may not be obvious to the person who is too close to the problem, on the ground."

So there was no time for his pain right now, there was no chance to do it properly. He would have to postpone that, for now. Because focusing on whatever Mycroft had brought him was more important than his private pain, obviously. He couldn't let his brother know how weak he was. How hard it was to draw breath or even blink. Mycroft could never know how deep the wound went.

He steeled himself and smirked thinly.

"So I'm supposed to work on data sent in by some... plod from MI6?"

"You'd better appreciate that, brother. The man will out there, risking his life, and you can sit here in this cosy office, working on the material in comfort. You will have access to all kinds of surveillance recordings, satellite imagery, police documentation and whatever else you need - we won't be able to send these to him, just whatever you can work out from them. He will depend on you for proper, insightful summaries."

"Is on the move already?"

"Leaving England in a few hours. We've just managed to locate the first promising group in France. Fortunately he is rather fluent in French."

"A polyglot then?"

"Ah, an undiscovered genius in many areas, brother mine. MI6 was delighted to steal him from MI5. They almost came to blows over it, actually. And I do mean it literally. Brawling like schoolboys over one scrumptious operative."

"You describe him as if he was a creme puff, brother. Is your blood sugar low?"

Mycroft gave him a satisfied half-smile.

"Let's say that had the man not been quite, quite taken, I would have _recruited_ him _myself_."

He shuddered in revulsion.

"Stop. I don't want to even _know_ what kind of thoughts you entertain about the security agents of the realm. Or about anyone. You should hope that poor guy never learns what you just said, or he may defect to another country to avoid you."

"I assure you, brother mine, that I've always behaved with utmost respect to that agent's wishes, ever since he had made it plain to me what his interests were. But, should he ever indicate being _amenable_ , well" he smirked in that obnoxious Mycroft way.

"You could scar the poor man permanently" he scoffed half-heartedly. "Not to mention you most probably aren't his type anyway."

"Why shouldn't _I_ be someone's type?" Mycroft's smirk deepened. "I think I could suit him just fine."

"Aren't most of the agents straight? They have to be, to properly seduce all these women that they use for their clandestine purposes."

"Actually, they are of all orientations, than you very much. Including bi, in this particular case."

"Would he be willing to be involved with a superior? They are supposed to have some kind of moral code, aren't they?"

"They may, but I'd say this one is a law unto himself. If he wanted, he would. But he doesn't want and I'm not one to press my suit in such a case."

"Hopefully, or it could end up as a harassment suit."

Mycroft groaned painfully, drawing attention of the agents placed at neighbouring desks.

"You are less than adept at being funny, brother mine. Now, will you help me with the reports? I will have everything forwarded to you, whatever he collects. There is an office being made ready for that. It will be yours, and yours only, if you agree. And a room downstairs, full blackout, just as you like them."

Own office and a room sounded good. Promising. Not a room at Mycroft's, not a hotel. A place just for him that was _not_ 221B..

Because Sherlock hadn't been back to 221B for these ten days. He couldn't. He couldn't even think about it for too long. Even the Mind Palace version of the flat felt wrong. Too full of John and too empty at the same time. He knew perfectly what he would find, should he return. There would be a thick beige jumper on the chair, a half mug of tea on the counter, the paper - folded just like John liked it - on the table. Impossible. Terrifying by its ability to cruelly remind him without a sound or a movement of what he had lost. By not being simply _too late_ , like everyone else seemed to be. By being _not enough_ for John Watson to carry on living.

He shook it off, closing the door to the room in his Mind Palace and turning his back to it.

"OK. Send the reports. I'll need access to whatever he references in them."

"Of course. The only limited resource are the personnel files of the agencies. If you need something from them you'll need to tell me. And yes, everyone had been warned against you."

_Whatever. As long as I can get enough time..._

"Now, get some sleep, Sherlock. I'll have most of your things delivered to your room in an hour or so. Anthea will let you know once it's all ready. I assumed you'd be unwilling to go back to Baker Street for some time yet."

_You assume correctly, you pompous git._

He nodded curtly.

_Say 'thank you', Sherlock._

He heaved a sigh.

"Thank you, Mycroft. Yes. I'd rather sleep here."

 

#

 

The cemetery was depressingly empty. Apart from the priest, who had said several generic words about John's service to the country, the only people present were the Yarders, Molly, Mycroft and him, with Mrs Hudson clinging to his arm.

There were no army buddies.

No university colleagues.

No family. Well, Harry was still in a hospital after collapsing due to shock, and apparently they were the last ones left. Well, she was, now.

No official military representative, which angered him most of all.

John had given his health to the country that had chewed him, sucked out all that it needed, spat him out and left him to rot in some dismal squalid room - Sherlock still remembered sneaking into his new flatmate's old digs, checking what kind of man he had actually invited to live with him and leaving in dread of the way the Army provided for the people who fought in its ranks.

And now they hadn't even sent a lousy sergeant or whoever was appropriate, to do... these things that happened at military ceremonies, whatever they were. Holding a box of John's medals or... whatever. Someone with a bloody bugle at least.

A Captain, veteran or not, deserved a better treatment.

His Captain deserved a better treatment.

_From you too, you git._

_Yes, John. I'm sorry._

_Will you be home soon?_

_John?_

...

_John?_

 

#

 

The way back from the cemetery was uncomfortable. He walked, he needed the movement after all the days of being cooped up in the office and his tiny bedroom, but he felt unease, a tingling down his spine, as if someone was running a feather over the exposed skin of his neck.

He straightened the coat collar and tightened the scarf just a bit.

There was someone watching him.

_John? Is it you?_

No, if it was John, he would have been holding his hand, not just watching him from the shadows. Not John.

_John, do you see anyone?_

No, John would not have seen them. But he would have shrugged and smiled, checking if his gun was still in comfortable reach. He would have gone on alert, just a bit. And then maybe he would not have really, consciously _noticed_ , but he would have known, with his soldier's intuition, that there was something going on.

_Like that car that had been following me for the last three intersections._

_Piss off, Mycroft._

_You could be kinder to your brother, you know. He's only worried._

_He's a damned meddler, that's what he is._

_But I'll try. I'm sorry._

_John?_

 

#

 

The reports were concise and to the point. The French cell had by all signs been easy to discover, disconnect from the others and remove without bringing much attention to the fact that someone but the local police had ever approached them. The man behind the papers was personable, easygoing and apparently fluent in French, considering his flawless notes from the discussion in a local inn.

There were some startling observations made in the notes - like the accent of one of the men that wasn't as perfectly Parisian as he had been trying to pretend, and from which the agent made a supposition of the potential link to Spanish drug-trafficking organisations. It wasn't exactly a very surprising connection and one Sherlock himself would have probably worked out based on similar input much more quickly. Still, it was satisfying to work with someone showing that much observational skill and, at the same time, seemingly able to defer the larger decision-making tasks to others, who had more information available.

He wrote his precis, just a few lines, added the notes from their agents in Spain and included it in the next package dispatched by Mycroft. His first official foray into the international crime investigation.

How unexciting.

 

#

 

He even managed to put in a few days of Mind Palace analysis before the next batch of the reports arrived and he wasn't happy with himself. Not at all.

The simile Mycroft had used was eating at his conscience.

He would have denied it loudly, had anyone raised the possibility of him being led by such a feeling, but remorse was holding him in unyielding claws. He felt their pinpricks whenever his attention slipped from the reports in front of him.

 

####

 

"A bientôt, Jean."  
"Au revoir, Mariana."

"Bonne chance a toi, cheri."

"Merci" he kissed her cheek and shifted the pack on his shoulder slightly, trying to avoid putting pressure on the weaker spot.

 

####

 

The reports from Spain were much less precise. Apparently the man's Spanish was not as fluent... Ah, no. Barcelona. Catalan.

One of the envelopes contained a fridge magnet.

He sat, looking at it in surprise. The reports were spread all around him, providing all the variety of fascinating, important details, but his focus was on the small envelope, with a simple "M" on it, that had contained a fridge magnet in a shape of a building slightly resembling the Roman Colosseum.

"I believe this is mine" Mycroft plucked it from his fingers. "Thank _you_."

"What the hell is _that_?"

"That is a gift. You may be unused to the custom, but there is that general idea in a relationship between human beings that one buys small objects for another, in order to express gratitude or friendship. The agent on the case bought me this."

"Seriously, Mycroft, did you actually find yourself a gold..."

He trailed off. _No. No._

His fingers were in his hair before he even noticed it properly. _No._

Quiet, dark despair rolled through him.

 _No_.

"No. He is just a person who appreciates the mission he had been given and is showing his gratitude in this specific manner. I believe it's one of the most common types of mementos from visited places - magnets of objects of cultural or historical significance."

"He could have bought you something more... interesting."

"Actually, I an quite happy with what he chose. From Paris, he had sent me a Moulin Rouge magnet, but this one is, if I'm not mistaken, Plaza de toros de las Arenas, a bullring remade into a shopping mall. A fascinating idea."

_A bullring, fancy that. Never seen an actual bull fight._

_They are an awful, bloody spectacle for dull people._

_Some apparently need them to supply excitement._

_But I can take you to one, if you want._

_Do you?_

_Ah._

 

####

 

"Encantat de veure't" he said stiffly.

"Juan!" the man slapped him on his shoulder and he groaned in pain.

In seconds he was surrounded by concerned uniformed men and some, thankfully, had more English than he had Catalan. They helped him up, propped his stiffening leg on a stool and came back with hotpacks and painkillers. He accepted both greedily and washed the pills down with some very nice coffee. As he watched them plan and plot in the language he almost-but-rather-completely-not understood he strained to find a silver head among the others. But there was none. Not here. Wrong police station.

All wrong.

All alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translation:  
> French:  
> A bientôt - See you soon  
> Au revoir - Goodbye  
> Bonne chance a toi, cheri - Good luck to you, dear
> 
> Catalan:  
> Encantat de veure't - Glad to see you (as per google translator, which is where our agent took it from)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More reports coming, and new puzzles.

Reports covered with two scripts tumbled from yet another diplomatic package, and there was another envelope, this one of stiffened cardboard. Mycroft deftly removed his prize - this time the magnet was not decorated with a building, but with a girl in a blue dress - but there was something more in the envelope and Sherlock shook it out.

"A postcard" he said, surprised.

One the front, a print of a white and blue building took the whole length of the card.

On the back they found a comment "Зимний дворец" and hand-written in Cyrillic "Ваш, В"

"Winter Palace" Mycroft said softly. "But what is _this_...?"

The blue frocked girl - it looked more like a coat, after a careful scrutiny, considering she had a big fur hat and a hand muff, and was obviously surrounded by snow - was still a mystery.

The photo of the palace was rather simplistic, but the building was decorative enough not to require anything else but good light. He could have put that over the fireplace, if he could find a bigger copy. John would have liked it -- something to brighten up their dark walls.

_Don't tell me you've suddenly taken an interest in interior decoration._

_If that makes you come back, I will._

_John? When are you coming back?_

_John?_

_Ah._

 

#

 

His Mind Palace contained so many well-locked doors he was afraid there would be no more space to put the memories in.

It seemed John had invaded his every conscious thought. Every memory, every tiniest glimpse of the past had a smell, a taste or a _feeling_ of John. There was no place in his brain that would be completely John-free, and he actually didn't wish to revisit any of these.

He pushed a door he hadn't checked before.

"...nistan or Iraq?"

That adorable, confused expression.

"Excuse me?"

That voice.

He left the door slightly ajar.

He sat in the corridor in front of that door, his head resting on his knees, playing that scene again and again, from the first knock and 'bit different from my day' to that infernal _wink_. Why did he have to wink? We couldn't he have behaved like... No, he couldn't, could he? There was no way for him to behave any differently and, for all the months after, John Watson seemed to appreciate exactly that.

'Seemed' being the operative word.

Another round.

He could have been nicer to Molly. That remark about lipstick, so not on, Sherlock.

Another round.

He talked over John. Inexcusable.

Another.

No, wrong. Wrong, Sherlock, wrong. Wrong.

Another.

_I have a spot of a headache._

_Some tea would have been nice._

_Ah._

 

####

 

The vodka was always a challenge, but most of the days he could weasel out of drinking it by explaining his need to be sharp for a new job in the morning. His Russian wasn't perfect by any measure, but the locals always appreciated someone trying hard and, especially, knowing how to sing. He had actually picked some balalaika skills by the end of his stay and they parted in good camaraderie (and having eliminated a number of small cells of what may have been, but not necessarily was, Moriarty's operation).

He laughed himself silly picking the magnet and the postcard on the last day.

He had to sit down and cry for a moment then.

Sasha sat next to him and offered him a small tumbler of vodka anyway, and he drank it finally.

"No worries, Vaniushka" the bearded officer said, patting his back. "No worries. Will do the job and you can go home then."

He shook his head.

"Can't" he swallowed. "Ya yeshche ne mogu vernutsya damoy, Sasha. Long way."

"Nakonets, you will go home, niet?"

"One day. Vozmozhno."

"Hope is everything. Moja doch, her name is Nadiezda. Hope."

"Good name, Sasha. Good name."

 

####

 

There was a lull, during which Sherlock had managed to review all the previous and potentially linked reports and compile a list of possible new targets or spots of interest.

The package from Lahore came unexpectedly, as there had been no indication of Pakistani involvement in the Moriarty's organisation. Still, it seemed their agent had managed to get himself involved with whatever it was that had attracted his attention and after reviewing the material provided he had to grudgingly admit the man might have been quite correct to intervene. It may not have been Moriarty, but whatever the plot was, it was definitively under MI6 purview.

A magnet and a postcard, again.

"That's the Golden Temple" Mycroft picked up the piece of plastic and tapped it with his fingernails a few times. "Amritsar."

"And that's..." Sherlock halted for a moment. "A lot of colourful people?"

"Holi festival, I suppose. Interesting, if rather annoying."

There was no signature on the back, just a smear of vibrant blue paint.

 

####

 

He washed the pink from his sandy blonde hair and was now viewing the back of his neck with the makeup mirror for any stray traces of colour. Having checked the bottle of water for tampering - three days of "Delhi belly" were quite enough for his English constitution, thank you - he ordered a tea and sat down to writing another report. The postcard was so wonderfully contrasting he just couldn't stop himself.

He swiped the leftover blue from the cuff of his shirt and smeared it across the back of the card.

He at the same time hoped and dreaded that someone would lift a fingerprint from it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Ya yeshche ne mogu vernutsya damoy - I can't go home yet  
> Nakonets - In the end  
> Vozmozhno - Probably  
> Moja doch - My daughter
> 
> Who can guess what the first magnet is?


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some puzzles are solved, but new ones are added.  
> Mysterious cars appear.

Anthea brought Molly up to the "planning room", her disapproval obvious, but Mycroft's decree was final. They needed her expertise and despite what Sherlock said, there were details that simply required someone with formal medical education.

Which Molly did, in fact, have, and she provided the needed input without even looking back at Sherlock once. The bones were, most certainly, human, and she could, yes, take them and check them in the lab downstairs.

"What is that?"

The whiteboard set in the corner at first displayed only the two postcards, but finally Mycroft had relented and brought the magnets from home back to the office. The tiny mill, the Arena, the blue-frocked girl and the Golden Temple were carefully labelled with their respective dates and displayed against the two related postcards.

"Our agent is making some kind of a joke" Mycroft explained shortly. "Not sure yet what the pattern is."

"The second thing, what is it?" she poked the small Arena.

"A former bullring in Barcelona. Used as a concert hall later and now is a shopping mall."

She picked the girl magnet and brought her to the light.

"Was she sent from Saint Petersburg?" she asked finally.

"Yes, and the postcard from the Winter Palace, too" Anthea pointed out.

Molly smiled weakly and hummed a few notes.

"It's music" she said in explanatory tone.

"Well, you were humming a bit off-key..."

"No, I mean the common element. Music."

Mycroft frowned and they exchanged glances.

"What?"

"Moulin Rouge, the birthplace of cancan. The mall, used to be a concert hall. Petersburg, well, this one is trickier, but this" she tapped the girl "this is Anastasia."

Anthea's eyes widened.

"Have you heard..."

"There's a rumour in Saint Petersburg, have you heard, what they're saying on the street?"

"Although the Tsar did not survive, one daughter may be still alive..."

"The Princess Anastasia, but please do not repeat!"

They actually _giggled_ , looking at the astonished men.

"A musical. Kid's musical. And what about the Golden Temple then?"

Molly actually blushed as Anthea's eyes narrowed.

"Marriage has come to town, laughter, colour, light and sound..."

"Bride and Prejudice!"

The men shook in disgust.

"Where did you find that agent, Mycroft?"

"I think you could say he simply showed up on our doorstep one day."

"Do you simply take everyone who doesn't feel too intimidated by you?"

"That's not _that_ simple, brother mine."

_John made it look simple._

 

####

 

There was no package for several weeks, but a surprising development of a local investigation in New Delhi made them suspect one would be coming soon. Still it took additional few weeks and the thick letter was posted through the embassy in Singapore.

Not even trying to pretend, they fished out the envelope that was now marked _S & M_.

The magnet was in the shape of a wavy sword, or maybe a dagger.

The postcard was a photo of a single paper lantern, and on the back, someone drew a silhouette of a lizard.

_John would have known all the stupid songs from whatever that is supposed to be._

He couldn't allow himself any sentiment.

Visiting John's grave every week was already too much for him.

Visits to his Mind Palace, taking apart each and every interaction they had held was even worse. Still, he did it, slowly and methodically.

Maybe one of them would yield an answer.

 

#

 

The cars following him were definitely not Mycroft's. For one, they weren't the uniform, bland type that his brother tended to use for these purposes. For another, they weren't as deft in their manoeuvres as ones driven by Mycroft's minions. And, last but not least, his brother had sounded actually bothered by the information that he had detected the vehicles tailing him.

He was pretty sure they had started right outside the cemetery and gave up on him as soon as he found himself in an area of higher crowd density. Which meant...

...nothing really. Because what kind of logic did it require for someone to only follow him when he was alone and the car very clearly visible and leave him in peace once he was mixing with the general populace? The car following him along a semi-abandoned street had been rather obvious, which made absolutely _no sense_.

Still, someone had made an effort and he had a cold, unpleasant feeling he knew who it was. He wondered what his so-called nemessis would think now about his so-called heart. Now that everything that he could have ever wanted was dead, smashed to bits on the stones of the pavement outside...

_No._

The maniac had, however, stepped back, apparently. His operations were slowing down, even the reports from the whole country indicated certain sluggishness in movements. There were isolated situations in London itself, proving that the consulting criminal was staying close, but somewhat subdued.

Sherlock looked around as he neared the anonymised back entrance to what became, in essence, both his workplace and temporary home. There was nobody looking, no cars hovering, not even a stray dog watching him.

He leaned on the wall of the building, hiding his face in his hands.

_John, please. Please, please._

_I will be better._

_I am better._

_I am trying._

_Come home, please?_

_John?_

A hot droplet rolled down his cheek, marring the perfect expanse of his deep blue shirt with a darker spot.

_I hope you liked the flowers._

_The florist was rather surprised._

_A poppy, an sprig of thuja, a bellflower._

_Red daisies._

_And rue._

_I wonder if you can hear me._

_Sometimes I think I can hear you._

_But then I remember that I really can't._

_Because you aren't here._

_Maybe next time I'll pick something green._

_I'll be back, soon._

_Don't worry, John._

_I'll always come back._

_I will not leave you alone._

_I know it's too late._

_I'm sorry._

 

####

 

The tea was delicious and he wished he had more space in his luggage, but he made a note of the place and promised himself he'd come back at some point. The local police was not all that helpful, but, despite his earlier doubts, he came into contact with one of the crime families. He knew that there were places in the world where the stiff competition of illegal organisation made it harder for the outsiders to stay afloat. Or to stay secret, especially when they were a bunch of white guys sticking out like sore thumbs among the locals. Or to stay alive, once someone got wind of their ambitions.

The elimination of the target cell (and two other small organisations, accidentally discovered and removed just as swiftly) required from him only participation during the planning phase.

"We don't want any others thinking you one of the stupid whites" the lady leading one of the gangs explained in her heavy accent. "No shooting you by accident. No shooting our _cìwèi_ " she patted his head consolingly.

He really hoped whatever it was that she said was good, because the men around them roared with laughter. He smiled and drank some more tea and the old lady watched him with her small smile.

The men of the gang, in surprising cooperation with two other local criminal clans, have excised and executed everyone they identified as Moriarty's collaborator. There wasn't much evidence left after the ride, but what they found, they brought to him. The quick trip to Singapore they assisted him with was uneventful and he managed to make it to the right meeting point in time to hand over his package and receive a new phone, which had already been connected to the local network and secured against the local curiosity, both private and state-funded.

He checked his messages and the newly set up e-mail account.

_East. Fine. East it is._

_After all, going in one direction all the time will make you go back home, right?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How do you like it?  
> I'll be happy with any kind of feedback :)
> 
> cìwèi - hedgehog (or at least this is what google translate says...)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some more packages coming, some more reports.  
> Another visit to the cemetery.

The package from Japan contained much more than just the reports. It was, in fact, a full box of various documentation - partially pertaining to Japanese part of Moriarty's organisation, but partially being the record of the local crime organisations, starting with Yakuza and ending with some small obscure hacker communities. The envelope documenting the last contained also a printed note:

"This may not seem relevant, but they are easily influenced and I'd rather have someone from our side make use of them than our target. If used by a strong personality, they may become at least an irritant, if not an actual threat. Review the record and provide feedback. Due to unexpected circumstances, switching to plan Epsilon."

Whatever plan Epsilon was, Mycroft looked rather grim when they read the small letter. Not even finding the envelope with their tiny gifts made his spirit lift. This left Sherlock to put the tiny clay _biwa_ on their whiteboard, accompanied by a postcard of a Shinto temple gate, garish red against the blueness of the mountain behind it.

He sorted through the reports, comparing the confirmed size of Moriarty's operation to what they had predicted and found their estimates at least twenty percent too low. He made a retrofit of estimates and predictions for other guesses based on that information and could compile a reasonable route for the agent to follow, first up north along the coast, back to Russia - the other side, then back south to Australia.

"He won't be going anywhere" Mycroft informed him sharply that evening, when they sat down to the meal Anthea brought them. "Plan Epsilon means he had been shot. I was on the phone with the embassy and they confirm he is stable and reasonably well, but he can't walk for the time being. I will be setting a chat with him, as for once he is in a secure location, and you will be able to ask any questions that normally we wouldn't be able to transfer."

"Why not set a video call? Would be much more efficient."

"He prefers to chat" Mycroft massaged the bridge of his nose. "Now, go through these today so we can have some input for him tomorrow. There is something coming from DI Lestrade, too, as it seems the operations in London are being disorganised somewhat by their losses abroad. We have to add more randomness to his movements, Sherlock. He can't just follow along the coastline. Find something in Europe. Or have a look at Egypt. Egypt looked promising."

_John used to talk about seeing the Pyramids one day._

He never saw anything interesting in these heaps of stone. Their geometrical proportions were mathematically and aesthetically pleasing, but not much more. He could appreciate the labour used to put them up using only manual effort of the long-gone workers, but that would be an effort of half a day, and what John had been planning was a thorough trip of all of the nearly identical structures, apparently inspired by one of the insipid movies he loved so much.

_What was it... Indona James?_

_Blast it, John, where are you when I need you._

_Ah, I know._

_I'll visit tomorrow._

 

#

 

"I'm so sorry, John. I know, people don't expect me to even know this phrase. Yet, here I am. At the grave of my only friend - the only person I could honestly consider a friend, and yet, a man who didn't see _me_ as a friend enough to at least tell me there was something wrong between us. There are very few people in the world I can't read - and I always thought you to be more of the 'open book' category. It turns out you had incredible secretive depths. I wish I had seen this all before. I wish I had been friend enough to you. I wish I had read more than just the preface of that book."

Some of the flowers on the grave were dry already, so he added his own and carefully rearranged the others, removing the worst offenders. He could easily identify the small nosegay left by Mrs Hudson - they spoke on the phone every week, or rather she weeped and he listened quietly - and the ones left by Mike and Molly. There were a few single poppies left, which might have meant someone had after all informed John's army buddies of his passing or there were people who had noticed the lack of entries on his blog and connected the facts.

For a moment, he considered posting something on John's blog.

He didn't know what would have been appropriate.

A small arrangement of black, dead roses leaning on the headstone made him shiver in disgust. There were always people who expressed their anger at the graves of soldiers. Pacifists, people who supported the other side, people who didn't understand how someone could volunteer.

He picked up the hateful object and threw it into the large "greens" container. There was no reason to allow anyone to protest at John's grave, however indirectly. He would have to make sure to visit weekly, if only to make sure this never happened again.

He stepped away from the grave, sighing.

_Nice of you to care, you berk. I always knew you were soft inside._

_Oh, John, don't be sentimental. I just don't want to make it easy for them._

_..._

_Actually, be sentimental._

_If you wish._

_John?_

_I wish you were._

_Sentimental, that is._

_That would mean you're alive._

_John?_

A single green carnation now contrasted vividly with the black stone.

 

#

 

This time he identified the car even before he left the cemetery.

Still, he kept himself from betraying the fact, simply walking at his normal pace, not really watching the car too obviously. There was something profoundly weird about a car following him from the cemetery specifically. He just couldn't put his finger on it.

The last car turned away the moment he got engulfed by a group of young people hurrying from their classes, in a completely different place than the last time.

That only reinforced the general feeling of weirdness. This kind of behaviour was not something he could match to any logical reasoning. Why? Why follow when he is alone and the car obvious and visible and leave when he is in a crowd? A proper stalker would have done it differently. A private eye - someone less professional than him, obviously, but still - would have done it differently, too.

This was something different about that one.

They only followed him when he was _alone_. Only when he was in plain sight.

Never came into contact.

Never approached or threatened.

Left the moment he was not clearly visible.

They never _hid_ from him.

 

####

 

The shootout between two rivalling gangs of Tokyo suburbs resulted in him needing a visit in local emergency in order to dig out the bullet and stitch the wound. Nobody even raised an eyebrow at the way he declined the analgesic suggested and the nurse sewing him patted his back, making supporting noises.

His head had been swimming already due to blood loss and whatever it was that his last host had laced the tea with - more tea, this time the type that he wasn't a particular fan of, but that, in retrospective, might have been also fault of whatever was addling his brain so.

A plainclothes detective, one that he had contacted through an old friend three days previous, had picked him up once the doctors had allowed him to stand up.

"Where to, sir?"

He checked his coat pockets carefully and handed the man a small roll of rice paper.

Once he was transferred to a secure black sedan and a familiar briefcase of fresh-from-home documents greeted him on the backseat, he slumped bonelessly to the side, leaning against it.

_Nine months. And I hadn't even started on the American side of the equation._

 

####

 

The package from Egypt contained only dry reports. They contained their disappointment, but he could see Mycroft checking the thick envelope for something more than just stapled pieces of paper a few times. There was nothing, so finally they settled and started reading, adding points and marks on the maps, marking Cairo and the surrounding region as "done" with certain satisfaction.

As he turned the last page of the main sheaf of papers, he saw it.

A sketch of the Pyramids, with an outline of a camel in front of them and a thin slice of the moon above them.

Simple, light touches of the pencil, slight shading. Perfect minimalism. Slightly smudged on the left side of the drawing, probably due to being stapled to the report.

By unspoken agreement they removed the otherwise empty page and pinned it on the side of the board, away from everything else.

 

#

 

A small balalaika was the next magnet. Mycroft had spent several minutes studying it, but finally gave up and added it to the growing collection.

"Your agent grows fanciful, brother mine" Sherlock waved a brightly-coloured postcard of an impressive Aurora Borealis at the board. "And yet the last delivery seems to be more than his standard, actually. There are in-depth descriptions of local dependencies of various gangs, their links back to Germany, Poland and Czech Republic, local and international dynamics and even a small SWOT analysis of the drug dealings business in general."

"I'm sending him some additional reading material with every package. Good to know he is making use of it."

"What kind of education does an agent like this have?"

"We... recruit from various specialisations. In his case - good base in natural sciences, high grade military training and some covert ops experience. He can shoot stuff, he can scout, he can analyse and he can patch himself up. One man orchestra, in a manner of speaking."

"Where in the world did you find such a marvel?" Sherlock was a bit snipy, probably, but his brother extolling some stranger's advantages left a bit of a bad taste in his mouth.

"He was being absolutely wasted where he was" Mycroft non-explained loftily. "When he turned out to be looking for a change in scenery, MI6 was happy to grab him."

"Good for MI6. I just hope they won't use him up completely. A guy like this could be an asset to them in a long run" he added absently. "They do so lack proper professionals in the ranks."

He more _felt_ than _saw_ Mycroft rolling his eyes.

#

There was no message on the postcard this time, just a single "B" and a pencil-drawn outline of a falling star.

B.

Byron? No, he didn't sound like a Byron.

Brian? Maybe a Brian.

Boris? Mixed-nationality? No, MI6... yes, they would. But something told him Boris was not it.

Bartholomew? Too unwieldy. That man had more... snap in him. Maybe a Bart, but Bart seemed _too_ short - and too yellow for some reason.

Sherlock flipped through a few more names, discarding them - not a Bubba, God, no. Not Bertram, the man didn't sound anything like an effete aristocrat. Benjamin... Benjamin sounded probable, especially if he went by Ben. But it seemed too soft.

The man behind the reports needed something more _harsh_.

Bernard? Bernie... No, not a Bernie.

Buck was out of question.

Blake?

"Blake" he subvocalised.

Hm. Blake sounded fine. And with its Old Norse roots and Irish tradition, it had an appropriate amount of _harsh_ in it, despite its superficial softness. He was OK with Blake.

 

####

 

Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, it _was_ cold out there. He had managed to get through to the locals, who seemed to have a surprising amount of information about the goings-on in Central Europe for people stuck in the arse of the next continent. And they seemed happy to share, and even to quietly dissolve their hastily-cobbled nascent sub-network and to accept some compensation for never going back into business with James Moriarty. Fortunately, his ability to reassure them of the neighbouring cell's destruction made them much more amenable to his proposals.

He got to what the locals called the hotel and in the civilised world would have been called a shack, but there weren't that many options available. At least the risk of freezing his bollocks off was much lower now that the receptionist had brought him additional heating unit and two duvets.

He stretched in the bed and pulled out the postcard with the Aurora Borealis he had found lounging in the "hotel's" lobby. He never managed to see the phenomenon himself, but he heard multiple times it was an interesting experience. He meditated on what to write - if anything - but settled on an initial, in the split hope that nobody would understand it and, at the same time, that one specific someone would see the writing on the wall - or on the postcard.

He was risking his cover, but he couldn't bring himself to _not_ try.

Every item was a hint, a trace, a suggestion.

Someone just had to read them correctly.

He stifled a pained moan as the wound from Japan twinged mercilessly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, what do you make of this?


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock is guessing, Mycroft is being mysterious, the agent is being mischievous.  
> And it's snowing somewhere in Poland.  
> Also, a visit to the cemetery.

Whatever the analysis told them about the situation in Poland, it had apparently been worse. The package was filled with varied reports - in Polish, English, German and, surprisingly, Lithuanian.

"How many languages does your precious agent speak, actually?"

"Not sure at this point" Mycroft admitted reluctantly. "Had you asked me a year ago, I'd have said 'English, and not very fluent in that either'. His attempts at field reports from situations he was involved in veered into fantastical more than factual. And he seemed to be having issues forming them correctly. Now..." he raised his eyebrows and shrugged. "I have learnt his French was more than passable just weeks before his deployment. His ability to make friends in every society he encounters was his most important selling point for this mission. Also, his wide contacts all around the globe due to his previous career. It seems everyone had underestimated his more cerebral skills, including me."

"So you have sent out a man that is... intelligent and easygoing, amiable maybe, but you expected him to succeed despite not possessing the vital skills needed for the mission?"

Mycroft pressed his lips into a thin line.

"His skills were more than satisfactory. The presented language abilities are... an unexpected bonus" he said haltingly. "It seems he had been holding back on us, in a manner of speaking."

"And he managed to hide all these skills from you for how long?" Sherlock asked absently, opening another folder, scanning the report and checking the photographs attached. When his brother was still not answering, he raised his head and met Mycroft's quizzical stare. "I mean, if he is the kind of agent you are describing, it would have been good of MI6 to have full knowledge of his capabilities..."

"I've known him personally for two years" Mycroft managed to admit, at last. "In that time I had never suspected him of, for one, being one of our agents at all. All his... additional... abilities were in a manner of speaking, less important."

"God, don't tell me you had hired him as an office assistant at some point and he had been sitting in the corner, making copies of your documents and laughing inside at your blindness..."

"I hadn't been in daily contact with him... and I must say, had his closest working partner been in my employ, I'd have sacked him for the oversight. Unfortunately none of his coworkers in either place of employment had been a trained operative... although the fact that they had never noticed anything unusual about the man renders me less than optimistic when I consider their line of work."

Sherlock groaned.

"Had he been hired by the NSY and hid amongst the mediocrity and averageness of their office staff? This might have affected his brain permanently! You shouldn't trust him with anything but the most basic tasks...!"

"Close, but not NSY. Yet he did come into contact with them, but wasn't afffected adversely, luckily for us."

"And yet I am to understand that he had been working in some kind of investigative capacity - or why else would you be so derisive of his coworkers - and not under your... Ah, some fashion of a private eye, I see. They tend to be rather disastrously incompetent, don't they?"

"In this case at least, definitely. Now, Sherlock, what about our latest package?"

"Our friend seems to have actually identified more than we had plotted for him, as Poland had been a meeting place of sorts - he had gone there based on a tangent identified in Russia, but they threads lead to Sweden, Finland - more specifically, Lapland - again to Russia, Lithuania and, of all places, the Kaliningrad district. And Prague, although I still have to identify which of the two possible ones he means."

"And...?"

"And _what_."

"Sherlock, stop being annoying."

He rolled his eyes and fished out the envelope.

Mycroft grunted in surprise, seeing it still unopened.

"I thought you may wish..." Sherlock shrugged.

He felt his brother's fingers tightening on his shoulder.

"Thank you. Let's have a look."

Three objects contained within stumped them for a moment.

The magnet showed a pair of people engaged in some kind of lively country dance - with the woman being held high in the air. That went immediately on the board. The postcard showed a surface of blue, white and grayish lines, waves and blobs, completely unrecognisable, yet fascinating in its very organic layout. Fortunately, the back of the card informed them - in four languages - that the object depicted was a piece of striped flint from Saint Cross mountains. Sherlock quietly made a note to search for more photos of the mineral, as it seemed like an interesting object, if limited in geographical scope.

The last object was a cardboard-mounted oak leaf.

"Who is that man, brother mine?" Sherlock ground his teeth. "He is getting on my nerves."

"Had I know he was that devious... He's toying with us."

"Really? I hadn't noticed. What gave you that feeling?"

"Sherlock. Now, the cardboard is definitely standard kind, most craft shops carry similar type. What I see as meaningful, though, here, in light pencil..."

"The Celtic knot. In Celtic mythology, the oak means loyalty, life, strength, wisdom, nobility..."

"Power, heritage, honour."

"Family and longevity."

"Durability and constancy."

He looked at Mycroft with a grimace.

"Is he at a risk of being removed from your ranks?"

"Not for the wide world."

"So he is _not_ trying to remind you, in this oblique way, that he is still loyal, or something similar."

"I... I certainly hope not."

"I think you'd better send some kind reassurance with the next package. Maybe something from home he might be missing? A box of tea, a package of biscuits? A bottle of whisky?"

Mycroft grimaced.

"Tea and biscuits, more appropriate. One shouldn't bait a child of an alcoholic with spirits."

Sherlock suppressed a shiver.

"No, definitely not that. We should have Molly pick something appropriate and yet portable."

"Anthea will know better what is safe to put in a diplomatic pouch."

 

####

 

It was one of a few times when he could safely and happily show in a public, official place without much of a disguise. Strolling amongst throngs of tourists, half of them deeply drunk British nationals (mostly participants of some stag night in progress of moving between locations) he ventured to the British consulate, comfortably located smack in the middle of the Old Town and performed the switch - his second package of reports for a pouch of documents and...

...sweets?

Allowed to seclude himself in an empty office overlooking the crossroads, he breathed in the smells from a trattoria across the street and, promising himself a coffee later, started emptying the package, which seemed to contain an unusual set of objects. Apart from the analyses and summaries, which bore the distinctive characteristics that made him bite his lip and shake his head, there was a zip-lock pouch of food. He pulled out a carefully wrapped heavy round, the smell sweet and bringing on a sudden wish for home.

_Why?_

A tiny round Christmas cake. And a bottle of brandy accompanying to it.

A small bottle of Irn Bru. Someone was being cruel.

A package of fig rolls. Another, of Digestives. A small tin of Yorkshire Gold tea, much smarter than what he usually bought when at home. _And_ a box of PG Tips.

A bag of Quality Street chocolates.

Haggis-flavoured crisps.

_Dear God, which one of them went shopping?_

A card.

_Just don't eat all of that at once._

_I trust you can make a rational decision._

_BB_

_PS LB's idea._

_PPS He's worried about my agent (!)_

He sat there, frozen, eyes not seeing a thing for tears welling up in them.

The coffee smell wafted up from the trattoria.

Someone was singing down on the street, loudly.

"For he is a jolly good fellow...!"

He felt one, round, fat tear roll down his cheek.

Of course, it must have been Anthea. The cake however seemed home-made and there weren't that many people of their...

Molly. Or Mrs Hudson.

He pressed his eyes with his thumbs.

Mycroft must never know how close he came to becoming undone by the simple gesture. It wasn't as if there was a distinct lack of British sweets or other products - no more than a mile and a half from where he was sitting, a large shopping centre offered a variety of them in a "tastes from the world" kind of shop and in Carrefour. He hadn't even been looking for them in particular, happy to stuff himself with local specialities, like chocolate-covered gooseberries.

It wasn't about the _contents_.

It was about the fact.

God, he missed them. All of them, even bloody Mycroft and his infuriating umbrella.

He inhaled deeply and wiped the moisture away from his cheeks.

There was no way to brew a proper tea at the moment, but one fig roll couldn't hurt, could it?

He opened the package and picked one. It was perfect.

He couldn't swallow it.

_How much longer?_

 

#

 

The hotel he had found was in fact an apartment somewhere in the old Jewish quarter. He had received a code to the main door, an instruction on how to find the right flat and another door code. The interior was quiet, far away from the street (trams were rather noisy) and the windows overlooked some kind of internal garden. It had to be rather pretty in summer, but now, covered with fresh snow - two inches of - it was stunning.

He unpacked his treasures, sorting the documents and committing to memory the needed parts. The parts he would have to dispose of the moment he could.

The box with the cake was calling to him.

He finally gave up and opened the package, just to have a whiff.

Two or three, actually.

The bottle of brandy was tiny, but adequate for the size of the cake. He considered drinking it all right there, just for a moment, but then he would have had to buy some other alcohol for the cake and he wasn't ready to venture outside, in the thick, falling snow, just to fetch some liquor.

He carefully doused the cake with two teaspoons of the brandy and carefully closed the bottle again.

The tiny apartment was, however, equipped with a kitchenette and, most importantly, a tea pot.

The discovery of a small box of single-serving honey packages placed next to the pot in the cupboard almost made him weep.

November outside, tea and coziness inside.

He could stay there, for a few more days. It was a nice place to be in the fall.

Not London. But good enough for now.

The tea pot was made of glass. He spent some time watching the tea slowly diffusing.

 

####

 

They didn't discuss the package after they saw Anthea pack it with her lips pressed in a thin line.

Sherlock heroically didn't snoop to see the card Mycroft had included in it. His brother seemed more than stretched these days.

_You could sometimes be nicer to him, you bloody git._

There was a period of quiet, which gave Sherlock a chance to visit Molly.

_Molly likes you, you know. You should appreciate it._

"You still haven't been back home?" she was dropping some solution into a small container with a pipette.

"No" he shrugged. "I asked Mrs Hudson to turn everything off and close the flat properly. I pay for it, of course" he cringed. "But when I think..."

She shook her head.

"You will have to, some day."

"I can't imagine it" he wrapped himself tighter in his coat. "It's unbearable."

"You need clothes" she pointed out.

"Mrs Hudson had sent some and Mycroft had ordered a few additional sets. Not a problem to get more, or to wash these in the guest quarter in the building."

"You can't avoid it forever!"

"I can if I wish to" he shivered and turned away.

"Sherlock, when did you last eat?"

He drew a shuddering breath. "Probably yesterday. Why?"

"You're not maintaining the correct body temperature. Much colder than you should be. Come on, I have my lunch here, and it's enough for two."

_Eat something, you berk._

He ate.

_Be kinder to Molly. She is a friend._

"I..." he swallowed. "I think I will go there. One day."

She frowned at him.

"Would you come with me?"

She blinked, but smiled, hesitantly.

"Moral support" she said. "I'll hold your hand, if you need it."

He rolled his eyes.

"Don't overdo it" he warned. "I'm still not sure when it would be."

"Call me and I'll be there, Sherlock."

_You can be nice, if you try._

_I'll try, John._

_John?_

 

#

 

"It's been a year today, John" he sighed, trailing his hand along the top of the headstone. "I wish I knew what to tell you. Nothing really interesting. Maybe, a bit. You would have laughed, I'm sure. Mycroft has a new agent and the guy seems to be, you would probably say, taking the piss. He is sending us these ridiculous messages - Mycroft has now a collection of plastic magnets from all around the world, starting with Moulin Rouge. The postcards we get are also nice. You would have liked them, I think. Colourful, but in a tasteful way, I think. Some of them quite decorative. I'm thinking about hunting down the original images and making posters out of them."

...

"Molly and Anthea seem to be bonding. I'm not sure if this is recommended. These two together seem like a dangerous combination. Still, at least now Anthea sometimes puts her phone away. And she convinced Molly to switch to a better model."

...

"Mycroft found a government job for me, John. Me, working in a government funded project, can you imagine it? Yep. Every day, nine to five - or more like ten to eleven, what with my circadian rhythm. I have an office now. An office, John. Sherlock Holmes has an office in the MI6 building. You would have laughed."

...

"There is a car following me every time I come home from here. I wish I could say I guess who it is, but I'm still not sure. I wonder what you would have made of them. They don't match any reasonable pattern I can think of."

...

"I'm a coward" he sighed and removed a few dead flowers, putting a fresh rose in front of John's name. "I can't go back to 221B. I just can't. Molly offered to go with me, but what will it help? You won't be there, so... why would I care?"

...

"Now, I..." he wiped his mouth with the back of his glove. "I hope you are OK now, John. I really hope you are better off there, wherever you are. I'm not a praying person, you know it. Neither were you, really, you have to admit it. So I don't think anything like a prayer would work now, but let me have this - let me have this one hope - that whatever it is that has happened to you, you... I hope it doesn't hurt anymore."

He pressed his glove to the tip of his nose in order to stave off the tears.

"I hope it doesn't hurt, John."

One fat, slow droplet rolled down the leather of his glove.

"There has to be a place for someone who had been hurting so much. This is the only thing that keeps me going, you know."

He picked up the plants that had dried out since his last visit and frowned, not finding the carnation. Someone must have removed it and left... yes, again, someone had left black flowers. Probably the same someone.

"They have no right" he shook his head. "They..."

He breathed, deeply.

"I won't be able to visit next week, maybe the one after either. But remember, I am thinking about you."

...

"I wish I could be sure you are not in pain anymore."


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poland, Norway, Sweden and Finland.  
> Poor agent Blake.  
> Also, Sherlock is a bit tired. Of everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for waiting ;)  
> The expected chapter count went up to 15.

He coughed. After Krakow and the bronchitis he had contracted there, his lungs still weren't quite back in shape, but being in a seaside town helped, if just a bit. Gdansk was fascinating as a point of contact of all kind of people, dock workers and ship personnel and tourists, still numerous at that time of the year. He sat in bars by the shore, watching the old, decommissioned museum ships moored there permanently and listening to people talk in that weird volapük that is organically created every time professionals of a certain specialisation meet and speak in their respective languages with just a smattering of something else. His English, German and generalised knowledge of Roman languages, plus the basic amount of Polish he managed to obtain allowed him to listen in safely on their discussions.

He had already composed several different reports based on what he heard. He would have to get this to Mycroft as soon as possible, to give the analysts - to give Sherlock - food for thought.

Switching to his thickest, most northern accent and wearing something almost like a stereotypical fisherman garb - thick jumper and working trousers that were near cousins of his army BDUs - he joined in the discussion from time to time, making knowledgeable remarks about that port or other, dissing politicians all around the world, joking about women and commanding officers.

The wealth of knowledge collected, the faint threads that - if looked at correctly - seemed almost, but not quite, entirely unlike something that Moriarty wouldn't touch, all of it made for a promising material to work on, especially once Sherlock would be done with it and even bigger picture emerged from the patterns.

He made daily notes in his personal shorthand and then destroyed them daily, after re-memorising them. He opened the tiny cake package and measured a teaspoon of brandy. He went out and bought warmer clothes, yet again, because all signs were pointing North this time. He took a day off and went to see one or two places that had been suggested to him, in order to look like a good little tourist.

"It won't be as pretty at this time of the year" the concierge grimaced. "But you should see it. Just a little ride up on the train and a walk. Very worth it."

He thanked the man and did as suggested, making all the needed bumbling tourist choices - buying the ticket in the ticket office and talking to the poor woman about everything and nothing, mixing his Polish with Russian mercilessly and not picking up the change. Almost allowed himself to be pickpocketed, but stopped the thin thief in time by "accidentally" stepping on his foot with a heavy boot.

Saw the sights. Took photos. Bought a magnet.

Came back to Gdansk and picked the postcard at the stand.

Fed his cake, this time not the brandy he had received with it, but Goldwasser, because it seemed somehow appropriate to add gold flakes to it. Because why not.

Ate a few of the more perishable biscuits.

Considered the bottle of Irn Bru, but decided to keep it until Christmas.

 

####

 

A new report came, unexpectedly, from Oslo.

_Have you ever been to Oslo, John?_

_I don't believe I have, no._

_You kept to warmer climes, I believe._

_I wonder what you'd say about the fjords._

They hadn't foreseen any kind of connection to Norway, but the agent (Blake? definitely Blake) saw something in the connections he made in that port town in Poland where he had stayed for such a long time and went with his instincts.

Sherlock could only confirm the validity of his choice. The sparsely inhabited inland areas were perfect for weapons caches, drug labs or any kind of interesting activity. He stayed up for two nights, reading and rereading, before confirming his findings and suggestions for next steps (Finland, and then apparently Australia). The message went out almost immediately and they tracked the possible outcomes in the news.

Information about a huge rockfall in Trollveggen went unnoticed by the general public, but they knew what and who had been buried under the massive amount of crumbly gneiss that had been called down by appropriately applied explosives.

"Talented, is he?" he passed Mycroft the magnet, finally. They decided to, from time to time, postpone their perusal of the weird gifts until the actions planned had been carried out.

"Army experience. He had mined the area around a base once with the engineering unit. 'For fun', he said" Mycroft shuddered and affixed the magnet on his side of the whiteboard. "The Forest Opera. Quaint little place. The card?"

He shrugged.

"Some townhouses. Pretty, but..."

"Quite decorative. It is an Old Town that survived, unlike many others in that country."

They affixed the postcard next to the magnet and dived back into the reports that carried with them a wealth of information from all around the world.

"Maybe you should assign him to Gdansk permanently" Sherlock couldn't stop himself from needling his brother a bit. "He flourished in that place. He could just sit around, watch people gossip and do half of the MI6 work all by himself."

His brother grimaced, just slightly.

"I will be bringing him to London ultimately" he said, looking at the great world map they used to track their work. "He will be needed here... Situations that may come up..." he shook his head. "We will need him to manage things here."

Sherlock frowned, watching his brother dithering.

"Are you just musing, or is there a point to your speech?"

A small tap of fingers on the table.

"I am quite sure I will need him here in order to contain the outcome of his time abroad" Mycroft's clipped tone was quite steady. "Now, reports. You need to see this part about Bolivia, it looks promising."

 

####

 

After the rockfall he felt not much could faze him anymore. Driving a snowmobile and then walking on foot through the border to Sweden? Not a problem. Feeding his Christmas cake with brandy in the middle of the snowstorm? A bit windy. Buying yet another set of clothes, because his were left somewhere at the bottom of some ravine? A small obstacle, but access to his MI6 budget was a blessing. Thus equipped he boarded the train to Stockholm, where he deposited a small perfunctory report. Two days in a local hotel allowed him to restock on calories and buy a ferry ticket at an obscure office somewhere on the outskirts of the town.

He still felt a little banged up from his roll down the slope of the Troll Wall but he hoped that a liberal application of Finnish sauna would bring him back to his feet in a short time. He had managed to get a bit of rest on the train and then a significantly better one on the ferry, but they were already slowly approaching the port and he had to pick himself up and he really, really didn't want to.

He packed what little clothes he bought in Östersund, the two pages of a report that he hadn't shredded yet (they had Sherlock's handwritten notes on the margins) and the bag of treats, including the tiny Christmas cake.

Before he wrapped it up, he measured another dose and dribbled it all over the little round.

His hand trembled and, just for a moment, he considered committing the sacrilege - cutting into that cake there and then.

_No. Either at Christmas or not at all._

_Only a week left._

 

#

 

He stepped off the ferry in the capital of Finland, drawing in the salt-infused air and shivered a bit, a mix of cold and sleepiness leaving him in slight discomfort. He needed at least a day of rest to make sure he was up to the task.

Maybe two days.

He wasn't unreasonable enough to expect his body to just carry on working if he neglected it. Unlike some consulting idiots, he knew that "the transport" needed regular feeding, watering and rest.

At least the bed on the ferry had been comfortable and they thought nothing of him asking for a full English to be delivered to his room and him never leaving the said room, even when the ferry stopped at Åland for an extensive duty-free shopping spree.

There was a slight cold bite in the air that suggested impending snowfall and he noticed a small shop displaying first traces of what would soon become the overwhelming Christmas offer. He didn't really _feel_ all that Christmas-y yet. There was no build-up, no preparation, no waiting - apart from the cake. He had missed Halloween when staying in a tiny town in southern Poland, as local practice was more of the cemetery-visiting variety than a treat-or-tricking one. Which was good, because he hadn't really felt like opening his temporary flat's door to a bunch of kids chattering in a language he mostly knew in writing.

Also, he wanted to celebrate the anniversary of his 'death' in quiet, in his squeaky bed, curled around a bottle of local craft beer. He had finally felt safe enough to drink one, after a year of avoiding any liquor unless socially required.

Now, finally, the reality caught up to him.

It had been over a year.

He found the hotel suggested by his observations from Poland and checked in with a fresh set of documents.

"Will you be needing anything?"

He shook his head.

"Just... what is the forecast for tomorrow?"

The receptionist's eyebrows went up, but she tapped on the screen of her tablet for a moment.

"Minus ten at midday and no snow, sir. Should be sunny."

"Thank you."

"The breakfast is served from seven until ten, downstairs..."

He nodded with a small smile.

He really hoped that he wouldn't have to eat anything from that kitchen. He didn't like the idea of eating anything prepared by Moriarty's men. They _probably_ had a separate kitchen for their illicit activities, but he couldn't be _sure_ unless he investigated, could he?

Instead he rode to the sixth floor and settled in the reasonably comfortable room.

Time to unwrap the cake and add some more brandy.

Carefully, spoon by spoon.

Only six more days till Christmas. He wouldn't allow himself to touch it any earlier.

 

####

 

By absolute coincidence Mycroft appeared at the same moment as the report package had been dropped off and watched Sherlock fish out the envelope. They put it aside and focused on the content of the reports. It looked like, luckily, in Finland the pieces of Moriarty's organisation had dissolved almost by themselves, apart from the ones running the hotel their agent had identified from the investigation done in Poland.

From the report, he had simply walked in, checked in as a guest, rested during the afternoon and proceeded to investigate over the course of the night and breakfast, when he had identified over a half of the kitchen staff as matching the descriptions received from two of the most cooperative - and least entangled - Moriarty’s men in Poland.

These two had been so eager to talk for the price of being handed to their local authorities as simple burglars that they provided a number of contact links in that part of Europe and detailed descriptions of anyone they ever came into contact with. To ensure their continued existence, Mycroft had sent a small message to his counterpart in the Polish government, underlining their importance to the international cooperation between agencies.

The same wouldn’t be sent to Finland, as it seemed their agent had been rather determined to deal with the criminals as long as they were gathered in one place.

On the plus side, he managed to get all of them eliminated in one fashion or another.

On the minus side, one of the primary hotels in Helsinki was now shut for extensive renovation, their agent had lost all his possessions in the fire (and fire-fighting) that followed and he had barely managed to contact the right embassy employee to be re-outfitted for further work.

Only once they had gone through all the reports and Sherlock had sorted them in order of relevance and probability, they opened the last envelope.

The snowflake magnet puzzled them for a moment, but the row of multicoloured socks (probably handmade) depicted on the postcard made both of them snigger.

“He is telling you something, Mycroft” Sherlock shook his head. “Is this a replacement lamest Christmas gift?”

“Me, brother mine? I got a snowflake, quite appropriate. The postcards are for you.”

Sherlock shot him an impatient glance.

“Why would this man be sending me anything?”

Mycroft sighed and turned the envelope address side up.

“I can't explain the 'why', but I can only say that he definitely _is_ sending them to you. M &S” he pointed out. “The first two were just for me, magnets. Ever since you joined, he added the postcards and S on the envelope.”

Sherlock shook his head.

"How could he know…? Ah, he met you, he knows about me and it followed the first set of analysis I've written. Must have noticed the distinctive change of style.”

"Well, that too. I also informed him to be on a lookout for data coming from my new analyst."

Sherlock shook his head.

"So, what kind of meaning would _socks_ from Finland have? Why socks?"

His brother sighed in such an impatient way it made Sherlock's neck crawl.

"What do you mean by that exhalation, Mycroft?"

"Sherlock... what are the _colours_ of these socks?"

He looked again.

"This one is obviously rainbow" he pointed out the first from the left. "This one is pink, purple and blue. Atrocious colour set, by the way."

"Next?"

"Purple, white, grey and black... What are... Ah."

"Also, the explanation is, actually, on the other side of the card, this time, too."

"So, basically, you cheated."

"I was _efficient_."

"And what are you trying to tell me this is all supposed to mean?"

"I would say, whatever you wish. Have a look at the previous cards and consider their content."

"You still have no idea what the magnets mean" he guessed and smirked as Mycroft flinched slightly. "You don't know. And it's bugging you."

His brother closed his eyes for a moment.

"I have to admit, the way that man's mind works is a surprise to me" he uttered. "I hadn't suspected him of being that... complicated."

Sherlock turned the card to check the description.

_Helsinki Pride decoration at a local yarn store_

"Really" he shook his head. "What is this... Have I ever _met_ that guy?"

Mycroft's eyebrow rose.

Sherlock tacked the postcard to the board with a free magnet.

"If I were to apply the standard population's view to the presented evidence" he said slowly, aligning the newest addition with the previous gifts "I'd say he was flirting with me."

"Oh" Mycroft reaffixed the snowflake magnet to centre it properly. "I'd say he is, in fact."

"So, do I know him?"

He saw his brother frown slightly.

"I'm... unsure. You have seen him, yes. More than once. Entirely unremarkable, as far as his appearance is concerned. But I don't think you _know_ him, no."

_I really wish you were here to hit him on his aristocratic nose, John._

_He is becoming unbearably smug._

_Do you think you could do it?_

_John?_

_..._

_Ah._

 

####

 

He sat with his head in his hands, trying to pull himself together.

His body still ached all over from the concussive force of the explosion that had set off the fire in the kitchens of the hotel. Despite having been patched up by the nice paramedics on the site and a generous dose of painkillers they had prescribed him, he still felt every bone, every joint and muscle as if each was sending a distress signal to his brain, and the command centre, overloaded by an influx of adrenaline, didn't know how to react.

The tiny B&B in the walking distance from the British Embassy was accommodating and inviting, including the possibility to request some personal shopping, which he availed himself of. Two bags of clothes in reasonably fitting sizes were delivered to his room and he could finally change out of the smoke and oil infused jumper and slacks he had pulled on two days earlier before breakfast.

 

The police officers on the scene had been supportive and understanding when he explained his lack of proper documents, pointing out that his personal possessions had been in the dining room, where not only the plume of fire had probably fried them (he _did_ sit very close to the kitchen entrance) but the emergency sprinklers had probably dissolved whatever was left. Yes, he should have been travelling with some kind of plastic ID, but, unfortunately, yes, he only had the passport and that was probably a sad lump of coal by now. He would appreciate getting him to the British Embassy, absolutely. They would be able to confirm his identity, hopefully. Yes, thank you, officer. No, a tourist. A friend suggested this hotel. No, nothing broken, thankfully. Terrible business. Absolutely terrible. Yes, he was fine, oh, well, a little gash over his left eye. Could do with a bit of plaster. Yes, thank you so much. Terrific, ta.

They had delivered him, and five other British nationals from the hotel to the Embassy, all of them slightly shaken and in need of new documents, contact with home or other support. He had allowed others to be helped first, graciously nodding a pair of rather traumatised teenagers to be dealt with before him and then disappeared in the general direction of the loo.

His appointed contact was already waiting for him and had a pack of new documents and money ready. She also let him in a small side room, more akin to a broom closet than a proper office, where a laptop had been set up and waiting for him.

"You memorise everything?" she asked in awe as he immediately started tapping out his report.

"Can't write stuff down" he shrugged. "Also, a tremor" he raised his left hand and allowed it to tremble visibly.

"Ah. Of course. I'll leave you to it, then. Would you want a cuppa?"

He smiled up at her as she stood by the door.

"That would be lovely, thank you."

The tea had been followed by a proper meal of sandwiches and biscuits, then by a dinner from the Embassy kitchen and then by a snack, when he waited for everything to be printed. He added a few items he had collected since the morning - including the magnet and the postcard bought with some random change he had found in his pockets - clipped the business cards of various police officers that had spoken to him to an empty page and added another listing of all equipment lost in the hotel.

 

Now, in the B&B he allowed himself to wallow a bit. Just a bit.

There was no half-empty package of biscuits waiting for him, no cake to be carefully doused with alcohol, no sign of even a symbolical countdown to Christmas. Not a trace of the assurance that someone out there, back home, _cared_.

Oh, he knew perfectly well that they did, after a fashion. Holmesian fashion.

And, well, it was better that Sherlock didn't know.

He sighed, burying his face in his hands.

How had it come to this?

Why was he on the other end of the continent, away from his chair, his tea, his laptop, his...

Away from Sherlock.

Was he grieving? Was he coping? Was Mycroft taking care of him?

What would he do if he found out what was going on?

What would he do if John managed to get back home before Sherlock found out?

What would the homecoming look like?

He leaned back on the bed and sighed again.

Sherlock, furious because someone managed to trick him.

Sherlock, furious because he knew all that time and couldn't understand why.

Sherlock, looking at him with absent eyes and saying "is there any tea?"

Actually the last option sounded quite tempting. To just slip in, behaving as if nothing had ever been wrong.

_Hah._


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John travels even further away from home.  
> Sherlock is a bit frustrated.  
> Moriarty had found a new hobby.  
> Mycroft is somewhat worried.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait, but in the meanwhile I had been on 2 weeks vacation and managed to drown my laptop. Fortunately it's working but I had a long break from writing.  
> I hope this chapter doesn't disappoint.

He escaped the clutches of European winter. He wanted to be as far from the general feeling of _Christmas_ as was physically possible. After Finland, after the sudden and rather idiotic way in which he had lost what little gifts he had received that year, after the heartache of the next few days, which he had spent imagining all the various ways in which he could reappear in London and reintegrate into everyone's lives, he needed to breathe. So he went through the reports he had carefully memorised and made an independent decision.

He was now paying for it, dearly.

He was quite certain _everything_ on that continent was quite ready to kill homo sapiens.

He would possibly, tentatively, exclude some sheep.

It was however impossible to differentiate between murderous and non-murderous ovines, so he simply avoided any kind of fauna. Including the rabbits, of course, because one of these could always be the most foul, cruel and bad-tempered rodent one would ever set eyes on. Some of them - descendants of many generations of survivors of attempted eradication - certainly looked as if they had a vicious streak a mile wide.

Some of the humans weren't that much better, as was easily proved once he started working with the local police force.

Looking at the map and the communication network, he had determined that anybody could have been hiding in the interior of that continent, but fortunately his specific leads all pointed towards Perth and a particular connection to Norway and an international motorcycle club. Although he wasn't sure at first how his interference would be received, he had found a common connection between himself and some of the local police officers by the virtue of someone's brother having been treated by his hospital following an unexpected skirmish. Maybe even by him - he wasn't going to claim it as a certain fact, but any connection was good.

The gang had been in fact connected to the Norway group, and had been wired into the whole network in such a weird fashion that it took weeks to untangle that part and get rid of them properly while still masking his involvement. Finally it was the financial angle that worked and the local police, in cooperation with Interpol and someone who looked suspiciously like CIA agents had first cut off the access to offshore accounts the group had maintained, then removed their revenue stream locally, by infiltrating the cooperating drug dealer networks and "disappearing" them quietly from the streets. Subsequently the organisation fell apart the minute their lack of financing was made known (by an _absolute accident_ ) to the members in the lower tiers, which allowed the police to pick them up at leisure whenever they resurfaced.

He felt quite satisfied with the outcome, despite not being directly involved in any of the actual proceedings. He was perfectly happy to stay in his civilised, air-conditioned hotel and communicate with his contacts in a comfortable office instead of some back-alley, sweat-down-his-back secret-messages-exchange manner.

"Now, Johnny-boy" the man in front of him smirked widely at the nervous twitch. "This was nice work, I have to admit. How did you even _know_ they were hiding all that stuff in their base?"

His half-smile pulled at some unused facial muscles.

"Just putting together the data from various sources. Sometimes you need to get a big picture before you can catch the little detail. I have a kind of... crime board" he tapped his temple. "Set up here. Everything links to something else. They had know-how from someone I've already dealt with. I saw the pattern of how they operated, it was familiar."

Andy - he was probably Andy - leaned closer.

"They had _know-how_? You mean they were... like, a franchise?"

"More like receiving... consultations, I'd say."

Probably Andy squeezed his eyes shut.

"Consultations, in crime? What kind of shit is that?"

"One of a kind. There is a guy in London who does this. I can see his fingerprints all over this group."

"That's just... grand. So I suppose he may be trying to rebuild this, yes? Anything we should be looking out for? Specific characteristics? Symptoms?"

He combed back his hair, thinking.

"I'll give your contact info to someone back home. They will tell you what to pay attention to."

 

#

 

He was tired, sweaty and worryingly itchy - he really didn't want to think too deeply about things that might have bitten him - but interrogation going on on the other side of the screen was fascinating, so he simply swallowed some more coffee and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

One hand taking furious notes in preparation for his report, the other scrambled for the summary of interrogations he had missed that had been provided to him by the kind officer who had guided him to the room he was currently occupying.

Local police weren't exactly happy to have him there, but mostly due to the underlying reason and not himself as himself - nobody liked bikie gangs in their area, but bikie gangs with international connections and delusions of grandeur were even worse, so they would allow that small Englishman in and talk to him, if the outcome was shutting down at last one of these organisations.

And now that the bikers were caught, in a number that was astounding to the officers processing them, they were spilling information like crazy. It seemed Moriarty didn't exactly engender loyalty in his subordinates, and they were more than willing to share all they knew in exchange for more leniency.

It seemed some parts of Moriarty's organisation had been strung together with so little, they unravelled as soon as a skillful investigator started pulling on the ends that were sticking out. In this particular case, the whole operation was linked to Moriarty by such flimsy relationship that simply cutting off their communication and finances made them collapse onto themselves. The outcome were various shocking revelations about local criminal structures and several new threads to follow for the local police.

He would be happy to leave them to it, but he stayed a few more days, making contact with a kind young lady in Canberra

 

####

 

The silhouette of the Sydney Opera was rather obvious and the postcard of a flock of sheep somehow fitted with the socks and other weird landscapes that graced their "secondary board". The reports of the bikie gangs however made them dig in their resources for more data, as none of them had ever been particularly interested in _that_ category of a criminal.

"Primitive" Mycroft snorted.

"But with Moriarty's help, apparently rather successful" Sherlock frowned, looking at the report on drug rings and their potential links to South America _and_ Africa at the same time.

"And trying to branch out. I wonder if that was by Moriarty's instigation or was it their own initiative..." Mycroft pursed his lips. "Nevermind. Have a look at this file and tell me what you see" he handed Sherlock another envelope. "Just delivered from one of my contacts in Brasil."

Sherlock glared at him heavily.

"Oh, fine" his brother relented. "The new kind of drug line has been identified in the capitol and other major cities and local government is rather unhappy, especially in the context of the football even that is to take place there next year. A lot of pressure and international oversight, terrible chaos of all kinds of people coming and going and much less control over their own 'patch' so to speak. Definitely nothing like out surveillance and security."

Sherlock nodded, refocusing on the papers in hand.

"Now, what I need you to make is a connection - if one exists - between that activity and Moriarty. If we managed to nudge the international police forces and all that private security that will be there to take down that part of his organisation, it may be a major blow to his finances."

Sherlock nodded slowly and finally looked up at his brother.

"Do you know what he is doing right now?"

Mycroft frowned and cocked his head to the side.

"He who?"

"Moriarty, obviously."

Somehow he suddenly felt as if some kind of tension had left Mycroft's body.

"He is focusing on bribing jockeys, the reports say. It seems it's his season for manipulating the so-called noble class of our country by the means of their purses."

"W- He is bribing riders at _Ascot_ of all places?"

At least maybe he could visit John's grave safely this week.

 

####

 

It was a good thing he had picked the magnet and the postcard so early - at the port, actually. If it took any longer, he would have been decidedly put off the little game by what he found out as he travelled south from Tanzania.

He couldn't decide whether it was the doctor in him or the soldier or simply a human being that was more affected by the outcome of his investigation. The little troupe of international medics applying polio vaccine that he had integrated himself with had been taking the news in stride and explaining that such was the way the things were happening here now.

He sat up at night and reviewed his discoveries, a chilling shiver going down his spine.

He had seen everything that Moriarty had involved himself in - drugs and weapons being the most obvious, money-lending and gambling close to the top of the list, too. But this was _new_. This would not have happened in Europe and other well-organised places like Japan or Australia, but here, where medical care was limited and only available from various missions and widely spread isolated doctors in makeshift clinics and rickety hospitals... Yes, here it was possible.

He squeezed his eyes shut and shivered in revulsion.

 

####

 

The report from Pretoria was unsettling. For one, it had been more than a month since the one from Perth. The other issue was the point of origin - they hadn't been expecting South Africa to come up so soon in their work. But as Sherlock tracked back to the reports from central Europe, there were notes on that direction in one of the attached analytics.

"That's the problem with working from someone else's data" he grumbled. "I should have _seen_ that myself..."

"He did, too" Mycroft's face was pinched in worry. "And he followed it, but..."

The truly unsettling part was a handwritten note.

Spidery writing, as if the author wasn't exactly sure how letters were supposed to be put together. Perfectly legible despite the shakiness but the message they carried was what was the most chilling. It was the first report that contained the _personal_ opinion of the agent, not put into an elegant form of analysis or generalised view of things.

 

_Let's put it plain: I would have expected his business to be in diamonds or gold._

_He is much less obvious and much more devious. Manipulating the deliveries_

_of AIDS medicine is his main game here. Same for malaria vaccine._

_Request immediate assistance on how to proceed to avoid destabilisation._

_Following contacts in MSF and RC to ensure their medicine stocks not_

_compromised. Check suppliers at the source. Warn missions._

_Check delivery companies. Some may be compromised. See report from Poland._

_Proof of redirected deliveries in att 2._

_Whole situation delineated in att 3._

_Current expected situation re: availability of medicine, att 4_

_In connection to the adulterated knockoff drugs in India, all mapped in att 5._

 

He saw Mycroft's face darkening at the presence of the little card and felt his own bile rising. He had to disconnect himself from that panicky feeling and focus. **Focus** on giving their man as much feedback as possible.

"Give us all medical specialists" was Mycroft's only order to Anthea as he handed her the note, and she scurried like a frightened mouse.

In a manner of speaking, it was the most surprising discovery. They had predicted weapons caches, drugs, antiques, blackmail, gambling and human trafficking. They had expected, just like the agent, diamonds or gold, the usual fare of criminals of the area. Moriarty's going for the weakest part of society, through affecting the charitable medical institutions had taken them unprepared. The malaria vaccine had not even been on their radar.

 

#

 

The doctors and pharmacists and even one ex-drug-rep convened and took the reports apart, asking questions, making connections and adding points he would have never thought of (not that he would be ever heard admitting as much). Still, every time he had a question, every time he needed to quickly appeal for more detailed data on some illness or drug combination, he caught himself looking to the left, where someone had put - knowingly or not - an empty chair. Somehow, magically, nobody took that place.

From time to time, if he looked at it at the right angle, he felt able to maintain an illusion that it had been occupied just seconds before and so would be filled in again soon. And that someone would lean a bit forward - still military stiff, with that quiet intensity that forced people to shut up and focus - and he would provide an input. It would not have to be an information crucial to the whole proceedings, but down the line, at some point, that input would become the seed for the solution, the core of the answer.

He sighed.

Now his core information came as written reports provided by some faceless agent who sent them reams of paper nobody but Sherlock read - well, and Mycroft, and now these specialists - but he couldn't really _ask_ the man questions. That one time when they interacted online, when he had been shot, the agent's typing was slow due to the still lingering effects of anaesthesia and so they didn't really _interact_ all that much.

He felt a lingering need for more details on the agent - apart from his abysmal handwriting.

 

#

 

The little council gave them the recommendation on the immediate steps to be undertaken and the dissipated, leaving Mycroft and Sherlock with a room full of new data and a need of a medical professional who would help them put it together. They both avoided each other's gazes as Mycroft asked Anthea to invite doctor Hooper to join them at her convenience.

None of them seemed able to refrain from thinking about another doctor, one who would have been there and easily translated it all from doctor-speak into plain English (and then allowed Sherlock to make fun of him, pointing out the details he had missed). He would have made a summary, a bulleted list and even flashcards if he thought it worth the effort to educate them.

But they would have to depend on Molly.

Now that the most important was done and Sherlock had put together a new board of connections between the smugglers, the factories and the places where the stolen medicines were offloaded, they had a moment of quiet.

They didn't allow themselves to even touch the thick envelope before, but now, finally, they felt entitled to the contents.

A small magnet depicted a very symbolically drawn lion with a huge, red mane as if rendered with a wax crayon.

A postcard of a lonely tree over a huge, empty plain.

Mycroft tapped the magnet with his nail and nodded slowly.

 

####

 

The job was done and he could safely leave Pretoria. Thankfully, Moriarty's connections hadn't seemed to be too deeply rooted in the local community. It was as if the man's overbearing disdain for everything that was not like himself (male, white, English-speaking, probably hetero) caused his elaborate plans to fail as soon as he stopped paying attention. The crime organisations he had planted and nourished in their infancy withered without his attention, making the work of dismantling them much easier than expected. The most important part was to do it in such a fashion that from the outside it would seem as having happened in a natural, organic way - if possible - or to let local forces take them down as a part of bigger, local initiative, like it happened with the bikie gang.

The only thing that was keeping him alive was his relative invisibility.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on [tumblr](https://srebrnafh.tumblr.com/) too.  
> And this is [my blog](https://fanfik.wordpress.com/).


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our dear agent is in South America, Jim is messing with medical equipment, Sherlock is a bit lost and Mycroft has a new hobby.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for such a long wait, but my brain just couldn't. I had to rephrase the plan for this chapter and completely change my approach. It may sound a little stilted, but I hope not too much.

If Australia had fauna that tried to eat a human being at every turn, this was even more insidious - the main enemy was the flora. There were vines everywhere, trying to trip him or to entangle in his hair. He had cropped it short, much shorter than he ever had in the Army, but still some plants made vigorous attempts, so he took to wearing a tight woollen cap, like the locals.

The path was narrow and muddy. Unfortunately it was also the only way to the little village he had on his roster. He picked it, on one side, to endear himself to the local MSF group that he had got himself attached to, and on the other - to be able to check the goings-on in a small valley nearby. Usually said sole path was covered with pretty yellow sand, finely ground by several generations of feet stomping it into submission, but the rain was his constant companion for the last three days and the path was suffering for it. In places, it was in fact as good as a little stream, with water rushing down it and forcing him to walk on the side, where larger bushes were watching him hungrily.

For a man who grew up in a proper little British town, with all its parks reasonably managed by people who made sure all bushes were carefully shaped into basic geometric forms and with plant life kept to windowsill boxes and backyard gardens, the whole _greenness_ of tropical forest was, to put it short, indecent. The sheer amount of plant varieties, the lushness of their colours, the hues of the flowers and the sheer intensity of _life_ around him seemed unnatural.

There was a parakeet following him, screaming imprecations in the local language (he didn't care to learn the name of the dialect, he just tried to understand it in the scope needed to talk to his patients), sitting on branches when he stopped for a breath and then accompanying him again when he moved, chivying him onwards, every scream a reminder that he was, in fact, quite alone there. Sometimes he imagined himself as an ambulance and the parakeet as the signal, letting people know he was approaching. Sometimes he felt like a thief and the bird was a burglar alarm.

He stopped again, tightened the straps of his backpack and checked the ground in front of him. The so-called path had changed into a mud stream here and he shook his head slowly, looking at it. It was by no means the worst road he had walked (the partially frozen mud-granita roads of Siberia, for one) but the humidity and the constant feeling of someone's eyes on his back affected him rather unexpectedly.

 

#

 

The village needs attended to (three vaccinations, a few bitter lacerations to be attended to, one pregnant woman who wanted a real city doctor to look at the progress), the gossip shared (as much as he could communicate in his broken mix of whatever-it-was, Portuguese and Spanish), the food offered and accepted (small amounts), his stash of tobacco shared... All done. Even then, he didn't feel like leaving. They were kind, they were accepting and they _needed_ him. Maybe, when it was all done, he would sign up with MSF for real - this time he would write his full CV and skills, not the official one - and be assighed to a region like that, where his skills were a rare and valued commodity. He wasn't needed back home, not really. Here, he made a difference. Here he was the only one who went to such extremes and the people _cherished_ him for it.

"Doc?"

Ah, Nina. Willowy, slightly too thin but strong just like any other child in the village, girl or boy.

"Doc, the valley thing" she whispered. Her English was steadily improving, and the other doctors reported her attaching herself to any newcomer and learning what she could, even before he came. "The valley people, coming today. You watch, ya?"

He nodded slowly.

The elders knew he wasn't there only as a doctor and they were, in fact, counting on him maybe being able to do something about the drug trade going right in their backyard.

"You stay, dinner eat. Drink. Not drink drink. Just make drinking."

"Pretend? Not really drin... ah, I see. Thank you, Nina. When do they come?"

She shrugged.

"Late. After sun is down. All children sleep, all women sleep."

"But Nina doesn't sleep?"

She scrunched her nose at him.

"Nina wants to know everything so she doesn't sleep when women sleep. She sleeps when the men sleep."

 

#

 

"The valley thing" was definitely a drug operation. He made a careful note of the GPS coordinates of the little pocket of flat, tree-less land in the middle of the South American forest and went down to the medical camp in the morning, putting a report together in his head.

 

####

 

A real life typewriter must have been the agent's only means of producing the report they had just received. An old one. With an old tape.

"He could have written it by hand" Sherlock grumbled, redirecting the lamp in order to see the faint letters better.

"No, he couldn't" Mycroft's lips were drawn into a thin line. "Have you seen the report from Lestrade? He has sent some news about a recent move in the London cell. They had apparently produced a flurry of activity on international market of hearing aids and I must admit even I don't see what Moriarty might be getting out of it."

"Apart from aggravating a number of hard-of-hearing folks who now will have to wait for a delayed delivery?" Molly put a coffee carrier and a bag of pastries on the coffee table. "Anthea called me in saying you seem to be having some kind of medical... Oh. That bastard. Really? He is into _that_ now?"

Sweet, kind, simple Molly. Her hands twisted into tight knot.

 

_She is not simple, you git. She does have a medical degree._

_I know, John. But..._

_Just listen to her, you numpty._

 

"What do you mean?"

She flipped one of the folders open.

"These are children hearing aids. The kind a toddler can use. He is making all these kids go without, somewhere out there."

"Shipments were for a charity that supports children with disabilities worldwide. Hard to say where they were supposed to go" Mycroft turned slightly towards her. "Can you tell me what that may mean for the patients?"

He tuned them out. Molly was explaining something about developmental delays and educational chances lost, and Mycroft (who probably knew this already quite well) was hovering over her with that indulgent smile of his.

There was something in one of these reports that seemed to rang false with him, but he couldn't put his finger on it. It wasn't the London part, that seemed whole and complete, if creepy (but they already knew Jim was not the most pleasant individual, so really, there was no surprise here). It was something in the other reports, not even from Blake, but...

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to put together that uncertain, itchy feeling.

_Damn._

 

The two new additions to the board weren't consoling at all, despite their undeniable colourfulness. The postcard depicting a poncho and the magnet decorated with a tiny Pan flute were forgotten the moment they met the white surface.

 

####

 

He made a mistake.

He wasn't feeling too great and he knew he made a mistake.

He wasn't yet sure what it was, but he would get it, soon.

Something was moving on the left, but when he turned, nobody was there.

Everything was going rather well for the previous few weeks - ever since he managed to get the package dispatched from Santiago, the gifts added at the last moment. He had lost the happiness that filled the choosing of the little mementos, but he knew that if he missed them this time, Mycroft would yank him out of the mission in a flash. He had to seem normal, business as usual, brilliant, fantastic, molto bene. No triggering sudden extraction, he _had_ to finish this. To see this through. If he didn't, Sherlock would never, ever be safe.

He had to stop and take a few breaths.

_Something is wrong. My heart shouldn't be working so..._

He shook his head. There was still some climb in front of him.

Someone moved in the bushes. Or something? Maybe a bit of fog.

A few steps on and his sluggish brain caught up.

_Oh._

_AMS._

_Shit._

_Thank you, doctor, for this succinct summary. Indeed, shit._

He was too high up. And he had been an idiot to decline the little help his village friends had offered him, because he had been too bloody proud to chew fucking coca leaves, because they were _coca_ leaves. He knew their solution was not perfect and in many ways risky, but now he was here, up over the world, higher than he had ever climbed by himself (he excluded the few forays with the army, when he had a full support of a technical team and a whole troop went together.

Here, he was alone. He was alone, without an oxygen tank, without support, without any help.

Like an idiot.

_Don't worry, nearly everyone is._

"Yes, thank you, Sherlock. Not _every_ idiot tries to do a mission in fucking Andes without fucking preparation. What exactly was I thinking?"

He sat down, leaning on a dried-out tree trunk and took stock of his symptoms.

Nausea, check.

Headache, fuck yes.

Dizziness, check.

Edema, God, thank you, not yet.

Shortness of breath, yeah.

Rapid pulse. To put it mildly.

Also, feeling like shit in general.

He sat for a moment longer, trying to get his bearings.

Most primary symptoms for acute AMS met.

What about severe symptoms? Was he a candidate for a pulmonary edema yet? No cough, that was good. No fever. He had no problems with his breathing when he was not walking. Good.

Cerebral edema?

Headache, yes. Vomiting, no. Not yet, maybe. It was still early.

Somewhere quite close a group of men was exchanging packages with another group of men and he was supposed to track them and make sure their plans were reported where needed.

But he could afford to sit there for a few moments more.

He breathed deeply, trying to inhale more oxygen.

_Hm. Rosin? And tobacco...? Is he..._

_Fuck._

_Cerebral edema after all._

_Or maybe not._

He blinked, but his field of vision was narrowing rather quickly.

_Shit._

Something stung his neck.

Darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Acute Mountain Sickness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altitude_sickness)  
>  When in Afghanistan, John could have potentially taken part in some excursions to higher sections of the country, but would have been properly equipped then.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock has a sudden revelation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so, again a huge delay. But it was a bit of a challenge to get this one correctly.

####

Dark

####

 

"It seems, brother mine, we are coming to a point where Moriarty's sheer level of arrogance is making his organisation collapse. The man is too self-centred to be able to effectively support such a vast network of contacts, as it needs his constant personal attention. And he is much too focused on his own superiority to pay said attention to groups that are, well..."

"Diverging from his own pale and European standard" Molly supplied with a sigh. "He tended to spout some pretty racist crap when we, well, when he..."

Anthea patted her hand absently.

"Well, he is paying now for his inattention" Mycroft opened a file on top of other reports. "Seems that his organisation in the United States is dissolving and being reincorporated into local gangs. Not to mention the Canadian operation, which was already almost non-existent. What I find slightly troubling though is the situation in South America..."

Sherlock sent him a glare from over his laptop.

"He will be _fine_ , Sherlock. He knows what he is doing. If he needs help, he will contact us."

Molly made a 'what can we do' face at Sherlock, who huffed and started typing again.

"It's not _that_ easy, Mycroft" he finally uttered. "I think he may be in danger."

"I'm quite convinced he will manage."

Sherlock raked his hair back.

"Not enough data" he mumbled. "It's like a... a hole... I can't just find the right..."

He tried breathing calmly, but it was becoming more and more exhausting.

Everyone jerked nervously as he stood up.

He needed air.

No.

He needed John.

So he would do the next best thing.

 

####

Cold

####

 

"I think I'm missing something. The problem is, I can't see the shape around it - usually when we miss something, it is a specific bit of information. The date of an event or a name of someone's dog. The direction of the wind on particular day. What I am missing now, John, is even the information of _what_ I am missing. It is the general missing-ness that I'm experiencing. And I don't just mean Blake's reports and Mycroft's complete lack of concern for his agent. It was nagging me even earlier. You would have probably seen it, or intuited it, or at least asked a damn question that would have made it obvious to me. This is a downside of working with a man who thinks he already knows everything. Bloody wanker never asks any questions. You, you were _perfect_. Educated, professional, highly intelligent - yes, I admit I just said this aloud - and with just the right amount of humility to be able to simply _ask_. You were free to ask, unlike Mycroft, who is constrained by his general all-knowing-ness and so forbidden to ask. He is supposed to already _know_. he doesn't even know it, he doesn't recognise the very fact that makes him less effective. He is not humble enough to bend and _ask_."

 

####

Alone

####

 

He leaned on the small stone, looking at the flowers, apparently refreshed on regular basis by someone. Yet again someone had left a wreath of black and beheaded flowers in the midsts of other, more friendly decorations.

He played for a moment with the white rose he was holding, but finally laid it across the top of the gravestone.

"I don't understand, who is doing this? Why would they..." he picked up the black wreath and looked at it in disgust. "How do they even _do_ this? I've asked the janitors and the groundskeepers and they say they never saw any visitor leave... this..."

He looked at the other flowers, then at the blackened flower crown he was holding.

"That only means they saw someone who was **not** a visitor. Or they... One of them..."

He felt something welling up inside his heart that threatened to break out as a sob.

"Oh, John. Even now, like this, you are of help. It was someone from the embassy staff. Mycroft... Mycroft has to know that! I'm so sorry, John. I have to run. Someone's life may depend on this."

He touched the headstone and smiled, long-unused muscles hurting as he pulled at them.

"Goodbye. I'll be back soon."

 

####

Hurt

####

 

In retrospect, it was obvious that someone from one of the embassies had to be involved in Moriarty's operation. They were too well-entrenched in South America, unlike the US and Canada, and that meant strong local support. Without Moriarty to keep the morale up, the organisation was tearing itself apart everywhere else - the key punches that Blake had dealt to it just made the whole process speed up to be done in months instead of years and removed some pivotal persons that might have put more resistance to the organic process of dissolution of specific cells.

What was surprising was the main man's complete indifference to his supposed masterwork being damaged all around him. He seemed focused on events right there in England, or even more specifically, in London. According to both NSY and the Interpol, ever since that singular move with hearing aids (apparently they could easily be reconfigured to be used as a particular kind of spying devices), the man hadn't even left the city. He wasn't paying attention to the parts of his network that were dying by themselves or to the ones that agent Blake had managed to clean or the ones that were still standing, if wobbly on their legs. Like South America. He was focusing on something specific, something that he could only get in London, no other explanation was possible. There had to be something fascinating to the consulting criminal if he stayed in one place for that long. If only Sherlock could work out what the hell it was that Jim Moriarty was so interested in, he would have been able to determine if his interest would hold for some time more. As it was, he could only guess that there was something being prepared that would impact the whole city. He would leave that to MI5. They were supposed to deal with crap of that calibre.

 

####

Sick

####

 

It had been eleven weeks since the last sign of life was received from agent Blake and Mycroft was still in denial. Sherlock wouldn't even accuse his brother of being intentionally dismissive of his suspicions. He was just unable to allow himself to admit there may be something to Sherlock's suggestions. He wasn't trying to get his agent killed, but it was as if he didn't know how to change his course, break out of his normal patterns and go to _help_ the guy.

He shook his head and flipped yet another folder open. In absence of Blake's reports, they were digging into all kinds of data, from consulates, embassies and other diplomatic institutions, to UN contacts to Lestrade's friends in various police forces around the world (and the man turned out to have a surprising number of buddies in all kinds of places, most of them happy to help to take down the consulting criminal).

When put together, they created a picture, yes. Yet it was a picture missing something and as Sherlock couldn't prove irrevocably that the culprit worked at an embassy (which one?), he couldn't be sure...

Ah.

 _Chile_.

Obvious, in retrospect, _again_. It _was_ the last place from which the agent had sent anything. But if he had been somehow spooked, he may now be without resources... Or unwilling to contact anyone through the official channels. Sherlock felt he was tragically late with his conclusions and that created a tiny pang of discomfort somewhere in the back of his brain.

 

####

Cut

####

 

_No more._

And they couldn't just walk up to the embassy building and demand the man to be handed over. If he was actually being kept there. Which was not guaranteed. Had something significant happened in the British Embassy in Chile, they would have heard about it, from Mycroft's one secure contact. That meant that the agent probably came and left as planned... And yes, there was a confirmation from the secretary that had sent the package, and she was the one that Mycroft had designated as trusted. Not high enough in the structure and not trained in anything specific. Just trusted to do her job properly and honestly. They could not rely on her to do any kind of investigative work, unfortunately.

So the agent had disappeared somewhere between Santiago and his next provisionally planned point of contact, which was... Brasília. Damn. He had been expected there no more than a month after leaving Santiago _or_ to send additional report to account for his lack of progress. There were non-diplomatic conduits set up for emergency kind of communication, and there were contingency measures that an agent could take in case he expected his planned dropoff point to be compromised.

But there had been nothing.

 

####

Silence

####

 

No ping on appointed secondary Skype accounts.

No e-mail.

No _mail_ , either.

No texts, no phone calls, nothing that their specialised web spiders would identify as plain communication from that agent.

_Not... not good._

He flipped through the reports and crime statistics quickly, simply reconfirming what he already knew.

Drugs. Tons of drugs.

The report from Santiago said their agent had been spying on one of the drug smuggling operations... and yes, of his general plan of following them to their point of origin. That meant he was out there, tracking a dangerous group, depending on meagre support from local officials - one that could be not available at all.

The agent had been resourceful until now, yes. He had shown the ability to cope with challenges of various locales and cultures and in some cases particular ingenuity in dealing with people who would have done in a lesser man. He was resilient and self-sufficient.

Yes.

But he had fallen off the map and been late for his scheduled contact by two months and change and Sherlock had to admit to having a gut feeling that there was something very wrong about the situation.

Also, should he get himself out of whatever he was stuck in, where would he go?

Straight into the arms of whoever betrayed him in the first place, most probably.

 

####

Blood

####

 

The office was empty.

The folders of reports were cleanly stacked according to the topic.

The most important one was left opened flat in the middle of the table.

Sherlock's alternative passport and driving licence were missing.

So was Sherlock and a non-insignificant amount of cash that they had stored in Mycroft's office safe.

"Reservations made online" Anthea tilted her screen to him. "Should we send someone...?"

He shook his head and opened a website on his phone.

"No, but be on alert for any messages coming from that area. Vague suspicious news reports, too. And request someone from the embassy to inform us, should they show up. Someone _you_ trust _._ "

"What are you...?"

"Stocking on cold compresses and ibuprofen" he smiled grimly at her. "I _am_ expecting at least one of them to chin me. At the same time, dear, do put strong surveillance on James Moriarty, please. And put a flag on any transaction done with Sherlock's cards, any of them. Mine, too. He doesn't have enough cash to last him very long. Ah, and check the recordings from the cameras over doctor Watson's grave and on the lanes leading to it. It seems something had happened there that had led Sherlock to this... revelation. It may be a few weeks of watching, I'm afraid."

"I'll get the team on it. And I can get footage from the cemetery entrance immediately" she suggested, watching him cautiously.

He nodded in a slightly distracted way.

_Where are you...?_

He wasn't really sure which one he was asking anymore.

 

####

_If this is dying, why do I have to be alone?_

####


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock travels, Molly is being unexpectedly smart and there is something weird going on in Rio.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for waiting, dears :) With NaNoWriMo done, I'm back to posting in this story and other Sherlock WIPs, as much as I can promise in this holiday season.
> 
> A small, but dramatically important edit thanks to SherKat :)
> 
> And another edit thanks to Camila Santos (updated El Capitano to O Capitão)!

The airport was full of people - to better to hide between - and steaming. Outside it was over thirty degrees, despite it being early June, but that made interiors, even supposedly air-conditioned, unbearable. Fortunately, with his minimal luggage and long legs he was able to get through the passport control and escape the teeming masses (some of which had never heard of a shower and deodorant).

Still, being out in the sun didn't make him feel any better, not after the long flight and without a good plan on what to do once he got to Rio. He had attempted to make analysis of the situation during the flight, but economy class was not invented for prolonged rest or effective thinking and he didn't manage to get far in his deliberations.

First thing then, a hotel. Something comfortable and yet anonymous enough for him to be able to have a few days of peace.

He twirled in place.

Ah. Information desk. Hopefully someone would be speaking English.

He needed to feel the city, to understand it, to learn the flows of it.

He smiled his most fake smile and turned to the young man behind the counter.

 

#

 

It was tedious, overly warm and the crowd was much too enthusiastic about whatever football event was going to be happening locally _in a year_. Still, the contact person he had divined from the documentation on their Brazilian network was no other than a stadium information booth assistant and so he had to wait until the masses of local enthusiasts of watching a stadium being built - what kind of brain needed that kind of entertainment? - passed and allowed him to approach her in relative peace.

The woman at the counter was one of the few he had met since leaving the plane that actually spoke acceptably clear English. He could have spent the flight on learning Portuguese, but his brain didn't want to focus, and later, at the tiny old-town hotel, he mostly slept and worked on his plan in his Mind Palace.

Now, after talking to her, he knew he would have to work on that, quickly. He would have to dive deeper, try to blend in with the locals and so, he would need to learn Portuguese - local dialect - in a matter of days.

Having gained the intelligence he needed (namely: their agent had never shown up in town) he downloaded a 'beginner' mode of the language training app and bought a handful of local newspapers.

 

#

 

Even he had to take a break from studying a completely new language, so he stretched on his bed and surveyed the cracks on the ceiling, slipping into his Mind Palace for needed data from time to time.

He already knew what went wrong and where.

He had made an error. A terrible error that could cost them the life of an agent.

He missed evidence of the fact that Blake-or-whoever-he-was was walking straight into the very hands of people who would gladly see him dead.

That man could already be dead.

That man who was more than just a common plodding minion. Someone who dared to play a game with Moriarty and Mycroft at the same time. Someone who had intrigued _Sherlock_ himself. He didn't know the answer to the postcards - or the magnets. Despite what Molly said, they couldn't be just "music related mementos" from all around the world. It was too easy. Too smooth.

He needed to recover the man and squeeze the reasoning out of him.

 

#

 

There was something suspicious going on in that town and no, he didn't mean just the fact that there were tourists coming to see the stadium being built. That was weird in itself, because even watching _football_ was never the most interesting thing to do - he vastly preferred observing people watching football, namely John - but watching a construction being completed? That was... So outside of what he would have deemed exciting. But he should better accept it, file it under "weirdness in Rio" and then move on.

There were too many things off, even with his poor knowledge of the specific region. Too many people in some places, too little people in others. And everyone was talking to persons they should not be talking to, at least in his experience. It was **unnatural**.

He would have to move to the interior, if he wanted to find Blake, and to do that, he needed to be able to ascertain cooperation of various local organisations - beginning with the police, yet making it as unobtrusive as possible, while at the same time watching out for whoever belonged to the organisation that was a threat to their agent.

His migraine was reaching cosmic levels.

He wished...

...he knew perfectly well what he wished for. He also knew he would not be getting it, ever again.

He had thrown it away by being an inconsiderate, unfeeling idiot.

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to stop the tears from coming. He couldn't wallow in that. He couldn't allow thinking about John to detract him from saving the man who had depended on him to provide the correct data. He was not losing another person who had trusted him.

But he gave himself a moment to consider what John would have said, had he been in Rio with him.

 

_#_

 

_Would you have wanted to come here?_

_We would have watched it all at home or at the pub with Lestrade, wouldn't we?_

_But maybe you would have wanted to see the stadiums becoming... stadiums?_

_I wonder if you would have enjoyed it. Taken photos. Made silly faces._

_There were many people your age out there, taking photos over the site fence._

_We could have sneaked in and had a look at the way they are working._

 

#

 

He opened his eyes wide in the dark room.

_The way they are working._

He rolled to the side and stared ahead, blackness layered in shades on the furniture.

_The way they are working._

He would definitely need to learn Portuguese, but not in order to go into the countryside.

 

####

 

She stood in front of the whiteboard, half-listening to Mycroft Holmes frothing at the mouth somewhere in the background.

There had to be a better explanation than just music, but what was it?

There were two types of magnets. One series were ones simply related to music in general, like the Sydney Opera. The other group was from kids' musicals.

She separated them into groups.

Crouching in front of the board, she slowly moved Moulin Rouge from the "general" category to the "musical-related".

_Anastasia._

"What are you doing, doctor Hooper?"

God, he needed a bell. Really. He was looming in her personal space. Way too much.

"I'm trying to work out the musical puzzle."

"And... how is it going?"

"The ones on the left are the red herring. The ones on the right have meaning."

He inhaled sharply.

"What do you _mean_?"

"I mean, we were - you were - served a series with too many elements. The ones that cover the actual meaning have to be removed in order for the pattern to be seen."

"So what are we left with?"

"Moulin Rouge and the girl is definitely Anastasia. The wavy sword is Mulan. The snowflake is Frozen. The lion is obviously Lion King."

"That one even I managed to work out. But what do they say?"

"This is..." she stopped. "Wait a minute."

She clicked something on her phone and the room filled with tinny music.

"...the biggest con in history! The princess Anastasia! Alive or dead? Who knows?"

Click, click.

"They popped out of the snow! Like daisies!"

Click, click.

"Snniff sniifff... Mrm. Hmmmmmm... Mmm. Hm! Simba! He's-he's alive! Ahhaah!"

Click, click.

"Elsa? Noooo!"

Click, clik.

"Now, Mr Holmes" Molly slipped her phone into her pocket. "What the hell is John Watson doing? And where is Sherlock?"

Mycroft Holmes recovered in remarkably short time, but she _saw_ the small, crooked smile that had pulled at his lips.

"I'm afraid, doctor Hooper, that the answer to both of these questions is, to use dear John's soldierly language, 'I have no fucking idea'. We've lost track of the both of them."

 

####

 

In hindsight, mouthing off to the local gang members controlling the stadium workers was probably not the brightest thing he had done, but he couldn't be arsed to care at that point. He had spent three weeks infiltrating the favelas and didn't manage to even get a foothold. So, he reasoned, maybe actually pissing off someone from the gang would turn out to be the smarter move. It got him in.

In cuffs.

_Because you are an idiot._

_Yes, John. I know._

_Will you come and get me out?_

_Maybe you called Mycroft before we went in?_

_Lestrade?_

_Ah..._

"You wait here. You touch nothing. You speak nothing. You sit and wait."

"For what?"

The man looked at him sourly.

"O Capitão doesn't like new faces. O Capitão likes stability and equal number of workers coming back as there were going in. O Capitão doesn't need interfering Anglos sticking their stupid noses into his business."

Probably O Capitão also suffered from smalldickitis and several other problems, looking at the way the orders were formulated. He wondered what he would find out about the man running that outfit before being brought to face the him in person, so he took a good, proper look about.

The building around him was a positive hive of activity. There were men coming through to some places deeper in, a van of workers leaving towards the stadium site, a group of women in brightly coloured smocks actually cleaning the floor...

_Not exactly the gang headquarters as I know them._

The men weren't cowed or overworked. The women in the cleaning team seemed reasonably cheerful. Guards, yes. There were guards. One at every door, more or less like in any bigger bank or office building. Armed, but still. Men getting out of the van had even shopping bags in their hands. As if they had been allowed to be outside on their own. If this was a gang that controlled the workforce on the stadium construction, there was something seriously weird going on.

"O Capitão will see you now" a new man, with a boring face of an accountant, opened the door inside and led him down the corridor. Another set of door opened in front of him.

A blast of music almost made him lose his balance. That O Capitão had to be a veritable king of the poor quarter. He had a full sized set of amplifiers with huge (if battered) speakers, now playing...

... _Queen?_

_"...all you need is, radio ga-ga..."_

The man himself was sitting at the desk - or rather half-reclining, with his surprisingly small and pale bare feet on the top of the wobbly heap of papers, the rest of his body hidden in multiple layers of cotton, all grey and beige. He even had a cliche straw hat hiding his face. The crutch propped on the side of the desk was a bit of a surprise.

Sherlock felt eyes focusing on him and suddenly the indolently sitting man went into full alert, straightening and clicking the remote to silence the music.

"Felipe, uncuff him" he ordered in a choked voice in Portuguese.

Sherlock couldn't believe his own ears. He barely noticed the guard removing his handcuffs.

"Felipe, leave me alone with him. Unless I call for you, nobody comes in."

"Si, Capitão."

The man stood up slowly, leaning on the crutch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit: a small note for whoever may be reading this and is from Poland - yeah, that scene is lifted brutally from one of "Tomek" books :>


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A talk. The Talk?  
> They talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was 90% ready for the last several months, it just needed some fleshing out and a bit of tweaking here and there.
> 
> Edit: I just noticed I didn't post a warning. This chapter contains description of torture - in Sherlock's deductions and John's own retelling. Not detailed, yet may be unpleasant for some.
> 
> If you want to avoid it, skip from "He looked the doctor all over," to "John, look at me".

"Hello, Sherlock" said an older, leaner, meaner and much more scarred version of John Watson.

He inhaled slowly, his brain kicking into higher gear, surveying everything - the clothes, the office, the desk, the bare feet, the crutch. Leaning to his right. Crutch, not cane. Much more pain. Probably actual damage this time. Not wearing shoes, feels at home and comfortable in here.

Quick glance to the left. A small cot, made with military corners. Even smaller box below it. A shelf, several music CDs. The desk, covered with paperwork and pens, but no computer or any electronics at all.

"John."

"M-hm."

Voice slightly rough. Maybe sentiment. Maybe something more permanent.

"Not dead."

"Not as dead as I expected to be at this stage. Much less dead than some would have liked me to be. I must admit that my - ah - continuous survival surprises me, still."

This made him wince.

"John."

His friend looked down at the hand clutching the crutch tightly.

"This time I'm limping for real" he said in conversational tone. "Not sure even you can cure this one."

In seconds, Sherlock was holding him in a rather ungraceful hug, relishing the feeling of a real, tangible proof of John Watson being slightly smarter than the general public gave him credit for.

"You... You let me believe... You managed to trick me, how...!"

"Yes, I am sorry" came a muffled reply. "I had to... Made a deal with Moriarty."

Sherlock stiffened and a dozen different thoughts flashed through his brain in a matter of a second.

"Deal with Moriarty" he repeated woodenly. "What was the snake planning? What did you promise him, John? _What did he promise you?_ "

"He wanted you to hurt."

John's voice was flat and devoid of even a smidgen of remorse.

"Well, he succeeded! With..." Sherlock inhaled. "With your participation."

"Not my first choice, I assure you" John's breath warmed a spot on his chest and he felt something _melt_ inside him as a strong, calloused hand brought his face down, so John could look at him straight. "He was planning to blackmail you. He had snipers on assignment - for Mrs Hudson, Greg and me. It was going to be either you committing suicide, or us getting shot. I offered him that I would off myself, suggesting that me killing myself would be more hurtful to you than him ordering a sniper to do it. He was a bit doubtful, considering he thought you'd not be moved enough if it was just me, but I convinced him. I had to gamble - would his belief in your humanity be enough for him to allow the trade."

A sharp pain inside made him jerk a bit.

"You... you set out with a plan _to hurt me the most_?" he tried moving away, but then John was holding him close.

"They won't hear us this way" he murmured. "I turned off the music, so anyone can be listening. The room is pretty well isolated, but there is still a risk..."

"John" Sherlock hissed.

"Sherlock... I had to make him let me be the badguy. He had to _see_ you hurting. He focused on you, so he ignored everything else. Honestly, I didn't expect him to be _that_ petty and one-track-minded. When he wasn't paying attention, I managed to undo something like eighty percent of his cells all around the world - or trigger their downfall. With certain help of local police forces and one very talented MI6 analyst. Maybe you know the guy...?" a ghost of laughter filled that last question. "Unfortunately, these guys in Bolivia had received some kind of warning," Sherlock felt John change positions and heard him hiss. "Can't stand for longer periods."

"What happened?"

"I..." John stumbled and caught himself on the desk. "Yeah. Need to sit down."

They manoeuvred around the hefty piece of furniture and got John into a comfortable-ish position. The shorter man sat now, breathing heavily, face lined and shoulders telling so much, of so much pain. Sherlock perched on the edge of his desk, surveying him carefully.

He tried not to look to closely at his emotions right then and there. He would find a moment for a review later, so for the time being he allowed a trill of elation to run up his spine and he firmly squashed all the others, reverting to more or less pure logic. Logic was good. Logic would get them out and then they would have all the time of the world.

Right?

"John, I need your honest input here, because this... this situation, I must say, I have estimated this badly. Very badly. Do I have to call for support? I knew it would be tough, what with me giving you probably some lousy intel - we only dug deeper when you went silent..."

"I can't leave them like this" came the semi-expected answer. "From the outside we're just like any other outfit that controls the local and migrant workers, supplying builders for the stadium site and everything around."

"But you work differently" Sherlock sat straighter, looking down at the more-silver-than-golden head, bowed in weariness. The slump of his shoulders was so not-John, so not-military that it was actually frightening. The man in front of him was John, but a lot of his innate... John-ness had been removed. _How?_

"I had organised these that weren't yet, how to say it, _allocated_. Easy for someone else to snatch them. So I did it, ensuring fair rules of labour division, time off, time with their families, support for application for prolonged stay. We have two local lawyers advising, both on labour law - not much we can do about that shot that happens at the sites, though - and on the rules of visa application and so on. They, me, you and two others are the only ones who know that this is not a typical for-profit thing."

"Do you need to stay here as long as it takes them to build the stadium?"

John sighed.

"Not really. But for at least a month from now. I think I can "promote" Felipe to Captain in that time and explain to him how I made this work."

"And will you come home then?"

There was no answer and John was looking sideways, away from him.

"John."

"I don't know, Sherlock" he said finally, voice more tired than ever before. "Should I? Should I resurrect 'that vet who couldn't stand the pressure of civilian life'? Or should I explain to the public that he had been in a 'facility' for a year and some change? Find a comfortable lie and make myself a madman? Or maybe I should tell them the truth? That I made a deal with our local Prince of Darkness?"

John's hand shook as he combed back his hair nervously.

"Do you see? Of course you do. I'm broken. I'm no good to you, Sherlock. No use. I'll probably never regain my dexterity, not even the kind that I had before I met you. My hands can't... I can't shoot anymore" he looked up, meeting Sherlock's gaze with his infinitely tired, worried, bluest eyes ever. The small flecks of gold almost disappeared at that angle and Sherlock felt as if he was falling into a blue-drenched abyss.

"John..."

"Don't worry. I'll send someone 'round for my things. I suppose they are stored somewhere, upstairs? In C?" his friend was talking, not looking at him at all, again. "You won't have to do anything. I'll find a flat - something with less stairs, I suppose, too - I should have enough savings now to afford something comfortable and not very ugly..." John's voice died and he took a long, tired breath. "Mycroft told me about my pension, you see. When he officially brings me back to life, I will be owed a lot of money by the Army. I will be able to pay for my own now..."

Sherlock added one more point to the list "to discuss whenever we have a free moment".

"And Moriarty will win" he heard his own words, filled with something very akin to pain. "He will win again and again, every day, because it will be like... He will get his wish, every day anew."

He hoped he would be able to control his mouth at some point that day before he spewed more of that romanticised tripe, but apparently his logical brain _had_ taken a few minutes off when it saw John and he was left with whatever it was that allowed such...

John frowned and glanced up again.

"But I'm useless" his hands shook as he brought them up. Left more than right, but the tremor was pronounced and definitely one that would prevent him from wielding any kind of weapon - including his beloved Sig. "I'm more broken than anyone c-can fix. Won't be able to help you with the Work."

John was stuttering. He was so tired his perfect control was slipping and what Sherlock was seeing was John Watson, the MI6 agent who got lost and...

_What the hell had happened? Why wasn't Mycroft informed..._

_...because John never told him. He continued his mission, just like he was, despite the fact that they... did what? Or was it only a recent development?_

He looked the doctor all over, trying to work out the damage, but even here, in the relative safety of his supposed headquarters-cum-bedroom, John was buttoned up and... Sherlock caught his wrists and turned these once-steady, surgeon's hands palm up. There were lines peeking out from beneath the tight cuff. Fine, faint lines that started a bit above the wrist and ended... where?

He traced with his eyes a path up John's arm, to his elbow, to his shoulder, to his _neck_ , where similar pink lines showed above the collar. The smaller man sat immobile, head turned away, whole body trembling, fingers jumping in an uncoordinated way.

"They tortured you" Sherlock felt his throat dry out with these words. "They cut you, line by line, touching a nerve here, a tendon there. They left you some first aid kit - not enough to save your hands, but enough to save your life."

A nod.

"They let you patch yourself up, but you can't suture things like this by yourself, especially when both hands are damaged. So you bandaged, and tried..." he opened one cuff with infinite care, to unearth two tiny scars, pinpricks on both sides of the faint line. "Stapling them together" he swallowed, hard.

"T-they t-thought it was funny."

The whisper was so broken he could barely understand John, but once his mind put the sentence together, he had to clench his fists in order not to destroy something. Or not to crush John to himself, to envelope him in a hug that would betray way too much.

"Where was it?" his own voice sounded alien to him.

"Not sure" John started to button the cuff, but his trembling fingers betrayed him. "Ff-fuck it. T-they drugged me somewhere in Bolivia. Not sure what it was, b-but it k-knocked me out good. I was already a b-bit sick due to the height - miscalculated the adaptation period - so they had an easy t-task. When I w-w-woke up I was strapped t-to a chair" he breathed slowly. "They actually thought I was CIA, working on some drug ring. T-the t-thing is, they had my d-description, and they didn't b-believe me when I t-tried..."

"You told them the truth - or a good, close enough version thereof - you are a British citizen, yadda yadda, and they didn't believe that, so they, what? Started 'advanced interrogation'?"

"More or less" John was shaking just a bit so Sherlock did up his cuff for him. "First it was just the b-beating. T-then they b-broke my nose. That much I set for myself. B-barely any trace now."

Sherlock had to admit, he hadn't noticed that detail before, but it seemed indeed that the nose had been broken and expertly set again.

"Then t-they started with the electricity. Then some g-good old waterboarding. Finally they recalled that I've told them I was a d-doctor - I actually offered to t-treat some of them, to g-get into their good graces - so t-they came with a first-aid k-kit and put me in that old, nearly empty office. One of them had a b-box knife and said I will have to show them how g-good I was before they trusted me with any of t-their wounded," John leaned forward again, breathing deeply, trying to stabilise himself, the continued, a bit slower. "I was actually stupid enough to think he would cut himself, but he caught my hand and cut it - my left hand. I told him I can't really do anything with that, because I'm left-handed. So he c-cut my right hand..."

Sherlock's breathing was coming in harsh pants now, catching up with John's pained retelling.

"John, you need specialist's help. Maybe they..."

"A doctor, remember" his voice was surprisingly strong and stable. "I know what they did and what I did. They saw me bandage my right hand and then I had to staple the left, because I couldn't bend my right hand enough, even if I could ever hold the needle correctly with it. So when that stopped bleeding, they made more cuts, making sure I had to staple at least some of them. They actually added the stapler - with two packages of spare staples - to the kit, laughing at me."

"John, look at me" Sherlock seized him by his shoulders. "Look at me. We are - _I am_ getting you out of here, and back to England. I don't care what you say. You need a hospital, a lot of rest and..." he rolled the flesh under his fingers a bit "...at least a month of Mrs Hudson's lunches in you."

"I can't, Sherlock. I have a responsibility t-towards these p-people. I organised this all. I set it up. I need to oversee this at least until I am sure I can hand it over safely."

The round face - not that round anymore, his nose sharper against the skin pulled tightly over the bones - turned at him defiantly, the Watson frown in full display.

Sherlock knew that this was the John Watson he was looking for.

And, knowing how he knew his friend - partner - there was one question Sherlock needed to ask. A question he already expected he could guess the answer to, but he needed John to see his point all by himself.

"How did you get here, John?"

John frowned.

"Meaning?"

"How did you get out of that place and how sure are you they didn't put anyone on your trail afterwards?"

The question hang in the air between them and John blanched.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More talking and explanations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was actually written rather long ago, but needed some corrections and tweaks. If you notice something going wrong in the text it's an artefact of me making more corrections in the same place and then not going back AGAIN.  
> Let me know in the comments or ping me on [my tumblr](https://srebrnafh.tumblr.com/).

The shaking of the body under Sherlock's hands intensified.

"They had let me go, actually," he heard finally. "When they saw that I couldn't even feed myself, they... they gave me..." John swallowed, body trembling like a pinged wire. "Another b-beating. And there were other things, too. You can guess. And then they let me g-go. I was lucky, I found a group of workers t-travelling to Brazil, b-back roads. Asked them to take me, I served as a tr-tr... translator. They got me to some veterinarian who gave me antibiotics and sewed up t-the worst of it. On my b-back. They'd b-brought me here. At the beginning, it was just tr-translating, but then I noticed some of them were being swindled... So I advised."

"And then you took the control of that group?"

"In a way" John's answer was clipped and his voice seemed dull, as if used up by the long speech just before. Sherlock took another look at the tired figure and swept the room for any new information. There was next to nothing to be found. That room was nearly empty - except for papers on the desk, and they all pertained to how the workers were being recompensed for their work and assigned leisure time.

"And you told them to call you 'O Capitão'? Used your military experience to organise them?"

"No. Yes."

"I suppose a field hospital is a good place to gain certain kinds of experience then."

"Yes."

He sighed, looking at that new, but much older John.

"I need to inform Mycroft of this development. John, you have to understand this - if they had _your_ description but were convinced you were _someone else_ , someone had _specifically_ misdirected them and made them more prone to take their anger out on you. If they had been given your real information, they wouldn't have tortured you - either they would have ignored the request to pick you up, or they'd have just thrown you in their local hold and been done with you. By making them think you were CIA, someone had put a target on your back and practically ensured that they'd be more intent on your capture and advanced interrogation. Not sure why they'd have let you go, but maybe there was some new order - or maybe they decided on their own? They could, couldn't they? Once they found out they had been misled as to your identity, they didn't want you there anymore, but by killing you they'd have potentially followed the unvoiced order of whoever had pointed you out to them. On one hand, they couldn't get to their employer, so they took their anger out on you, but on the other hand, they didn't want to, even in a roundabout way, to satisfy that need to have you eliminated..."

John was shaking.

"D-d-does this mean t-they know - Moriarty knows - _I_ am alive?" he finally uttered. "C-call Mycroft. Now. H-he has to secure G-Greg and..." he choked and covered his face with both hands.

"Let's hope it was simply someone from his structures and they just saw you as an annoying but forgettable random agent" Sherlock's fingers were on the screen already. "Crap. Reception is shit here."

"Sh-sherlock..."

John pushed a landline phone in his direction.

"T-this works. Just be q-q-quick."

It hurt to listen to John like that. It hurt to look at him, his wounds so glaringly obvious, both the ones on the skin and the ones on the soul.

There was a sound of someone picking up the receiver on the other end.

"Stop," he said immediately and heard his brother breathing in with a hiss. "Hudders and Gavin, secure them, now. I... I will be coming home, soon."

He replaced the receiver and looked at the broken soldier bowed over his pain.

His broken soldier.

His own to rescue and to bring back home.

His own to save.

"John... I'm afraid we need to move you, no matter what the state of your organisation. If they - Moriarty's men, I suppose - somehow realised that you were _you_ , they might have put a tail on you and you were not in any state to notice them, not to mention getting rid of them. They might have left you alone for the time being, because they had incapacitated you, and on the other hand, if they weren't part of Moriarty's direct structures, they might not have reported your capture or release - especially since they had to feel manipulated, but..."

"You, being here..."

"I'm afraid so. Will you come home with me?"

"I'm endangering them more by being here than I risk the stability by leaving," he said flatly. "Felipe will have to cope, somehow. Give me five minutes."

It was, in a way, a good thing John was that tired. Otherwise he would have been asking inconvenient questions, like "what is your plan" or "where are we going now". He had no idea, frankly, and until he got proper reception on his 'company' phone, he wouldn't be even able to call for support, if there was any available.

"Do you have any British documents? Anything that would pass muster?"

John just snorted.

"All in Bolivia" he said succinctly.

Sherlock sighed, honestly tired of having to come up with miracles, when all he wanted to do was to wrap John in his arms and not let him go - for at least a few days, or until they could get him to a decent hospital. Or home. Before he could formulate more of his plan than "not get caught by Moriarty's people at the consulate", John's slow steps were back.

All he had added were a pair of shoes, a light jacket and a rather small bag. More of a miniature cross-chest backpack rather.

No weapons.

John Watson with no weapons.

Unnatural.

The straw hat was resting in the middle of the desk, a piece of paper covered with shaky letters pinned to it.

John drew a small, shuddering breath.

"Sherlock, w-we will have to..." he sighed. "Leave quietly. Not that I'm a p-prisoner, but..."

He straightened and walked around the room, giving John the space he needed to gather his thoughts.

"T-they believe only I k-know things. Even though I don't. Usually I just read faster or-or-or see something in English, or..." he shrugged. "T-they..."

Yeah. Rather obvious that the workers wouldn't let go of the man who helped them to set up that mockery of a gang and so secured them against the movements of other "organisations".

"Any back way..."

John was already walking - slowly - towards the end of the room.

"Old storage" he said and opened the small door that blended perfectly with the wall around it, all peeling paint and pitted concrete.

Sherlock had to crouch a bit to get inside, and then they shuffled around, letting him turn on the torch and allow John to pull the door in from the inside and perform some small magical move that locked it shut.

"Go."

Torch off, they moved slowly in semi-darkness, broken only by occasional faulty seam between pieces of concrete making the walls of something that from the outside probably looked just like a part of a windowless wall. In the construction of that size cutting out a corridor two feet wide was probably never noticed, unless someone tried comparing the blueprints to the reality, and even then it would have required a skilled specialist to point to the place where the difference was exactly. Considering what kind of an anthill that warehouse had became, they'd probably have missed a whole vault and armoury.

"Sh," John stopped him and stood for a moment, breathing heavily.

"Come here," he pulled his... who were they? friends? partners? ...closer and took part of his weight on himself. "Lean on me and try to rest. We'll need to walk some more once we're out of here."

"And quick," John sighed into his chest. "It's only early evening, there should be no more van runs, and we usually close down rather tight after dark, but who knows."

"We just need to catch any kind of transport, to bring us to the centre. Then a taxi or something, to the consulate."

John nodded, his breath washing over Sherlock's skin through the thin shirt.

"I'll miss this," he said finally.

Sherlock made an active, conscious decision to not contradict John's plans to leave him. They would have enough time on the plane to discuss that. Now he had his faithful blogger and he was not letting him go, but it didn't make sense to press the subject.

He wasn't being sentimental or sparing John's feelings. He was being practical.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Out, finally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That one went quick, I'm surprised. It had been a huge gaping hole in the narrative since the beginning - I had all the 'before' plotted and most of the 'after', but this one... resisted. Well, it suddenly came together and I hope quite nicely.  
> I think I managed to weed out all the errors, but feel free to point out any that managed to escape.

The block in which the warehouses were located was surrounded by rather ramshackle buildings, streets with next to no lamps and criminal enterprises of rich variety and differing level of threat to passersby. Sherlock dusted John off the best he could, his friend returned the favour, bringing them both to some semblance of cleanliness and, as discreetly as they could, they made their way down towards less dangerous areas of the city. They had to make a wide arc between some less than reputable little houses in order to avoid coming to the front of John's "own" warehouse, where they would be spotted by guards familiar with his figure, or maybe even ones that had witnessed Sherlock being taken in scant hours before.

"Where are we going?" the bright tenor was laced with pain, but steady.

"First, to whatever serves as public transport in this city. Then, if we are lucky, we will get help at the consulate. If we are not, we will have to improvise."

 

#

 

They were not.

At least in that particular case it wasn't _John_ that these people were after, but Sherlock, which was heartening, to some degree. Still, it was an inconvenience and, seeing that whoever they were up against was in fact a high enough official in the consulate, they were cut off from any and all support, including a chance of a potential attempt at contacting Mycroft by a secure line - Sherlock's phone was still on a frizz, ignoring whatever served as network coverage locally.

Even worse, there was a possibility that their faces - at least Sherlock's - had been already sent around to the airports where they could potentially try to get through the security using some of Sherlock's credentials (at least one set of documents made him a minor diplomat) and adequate amount of money. He had a momentary idea of trying to use John's military background as a kind of prop in this, but, considering how his friend looked right now, they wouldn't have much chance of pulling that off. Definitely not at a Brazilian airport.

They would need the money all the same, but now they would have to spend it in another way. They definitely had no way of getting on a flight as legal passengers and faking their way onboard as crew was impossible with John's condition, so they would have to look for alternative solutions, and such solutions usually require a lot of funds.

They had made several withdrawals of cash all over the old city, using ATMs with no cameras or covering them quickly with a piece of thick paper to avoid getting caught in the picture. He knew Mycroft would recognise the pattern of these operations and, as soon as he reviewed them, would be making preparations for their return, but there was no secure way of communicating more details.

John had looked at him in surprise as he withdrew money in very specific batches, but followed him quietly until they were done (and had an unreasonable amount in Brazilian reals stashed on their persons).

"The good thing about these ATMs is that they have ten-real notes available, which makes for an easy way to signal someone who is watching the cash withdrawals. Mycroft of course has trackers on the cards I used, so he sees the numbers on the accounts immediately, as soon as the money is withdrawn. He will see the number of reals I've taken, which were very simply the codes multiplied by ten, for the smallest possible denomination."

John sighed and shook his head.

"You two..."

"It used to be a game when we were younger, but I used this trick effectively a few times when in London and without the option to use my phone for whatever reason. So I've just took out 710 reals - seventy one is my code, 320 reals - thirty two is yours, by the way, and three times 530. Fifty-three is a code for SOS. I know he can't help us, as it would take several more hours to launch any kind of operation that would work here _and_ without the actual cooperation from the consulate... No way to make it work today. He has no agents on the ground here."

John snorted.

"He does," he pointed out softly. "Us."

"Behold, the mighty MI6 operatives, equipped with a crutch, a broken mobile and a little heap of cash. Your commander Bond would have probably found and abandoned submarine by now," Sherlock answered equally quietly. "Well then. Let's see what the only two faithful agents of the empire can do on the foreign soil, if they put their minds to it."

 

#

 

As they sat outside a church with a view on the international airport - looking for all purposes like a pair of tired tourists enjoying the evening chill - he gathered John a little closer and sighed.

"I didn't expect the rot to be that deep," he admitted in a low voice. "I thought I could get someone to issue you a set of emergency travel papers and we could get out of here... I would splurge, buy us business-class, or, let's be crazy, first-class tickets. Neighbouring beds, a hot meal, a cup of decent-ish coffee. Or tea. You do still drink tea, don't you?"

He felt John nodding against his shoulder.

"Both. Any," the older man provided. "I mean, I'm not picky. After the jungle... You learn to just shut up and drink it, at some point."

He would not allow this anymore. John deserved to be properly taken care of.

Tea. Adequate meals. Bed, rest, medical care. Probably some kind of therapy, too. Better class than that hack the Army had sent him to. Mycroft would have to vet them - ha, probably MI6 had some on retainer...

He blinked, tightening his hold on his tired friend.

He was angry, but not in a fashion he would have expected.

He wasn't really angry at _John_. That was, in a way, a surprise.

Should he be angry? He was angry in the warehouse, when John told him about the deal he had made with Moriarty. The very fact that John made a deal with that little rat was aggravating, but at the end, Sherlock couldn't make himself feel anything but elation.

John was alive.

John was safe.

Ish.

John was alive and well and smart and sitting with him on this bench.

John had outsmarted Moriarty _and_ Sherlock and...

Well.

One thing for sure, he had had help.

He felt his heart stutter and his hold on the soldier tightened.

"Sherlock?" John's voice was slurred slightly.

"How much did Mycroft help you with?" he asked coldly, trying not to sound too injured.

"Almost nothing. I m-mean, after I met Moriarty - he c-came about just to g-gloat, when I was out walking..." John breathed in slowly, turning his face more into Sherlock's chest and sagging slightly "...and hearing him r-r-rave about you and b-burning your heart out and... t-things - I c-contacted Mycroft and told him I would need his help," another deep breath, air held for a moment - attempt to stop the stuttering? "That c-creep... I mean Jim, not Mycroft, don't laugh... he actually allowed me some t-time to 'put my affairs in order', making for a more probable p-planned suicide. I c-c-convinced him it would be a bigger hit if I left some kind of hidden note at h-home... for you to find later... He was all for it, c-creep that he is. I think he... never expected me to try to.. deceive him, you know. He actually b-believed me to be true - I did put on a little performance with my shaking hands, tearing up eyes..." he trailed off, breathing shallowly. "I... c-couldn't do it myself. Mycroft was... surprisingly supportive. He set up... almost everything. He and a f-few of his men. A doctor was on the scene, in case I hurt myself..." he quieted again, taking slow breaths that warmed the small spot on Sherlock's shirt.

Sherlock was silent, trying to put together the whole situation in his head.

John, frantic for his security. Making a deal with the devil incarnate himself.

And then with Mycroft.

John, faking his way bravely through their last days together.

All so that Sherlock wouldn't have to do that same very thing.

"I could have dealt with him, you know."

"You could have," John agreed quietly. "But he was... so gleeful... if you could hear him... I didn't want..."

"You didn't want me tempted," he said flatly. "You thought I would... what?"

John shrugged slightly.

"You got lost so easily," he sighed. "You took him on as a challenge. As someone who at least works on some plane close to ours, someone you could outsmart."

"You outsmarted him," Sherlock pointed out. "He apparently isn't all that intelligent."

"Sherlock," the old scold had lost its bite. "He is pretty wicked smart. He just wasn't expecting _me_ to be smart. He expected another pool, another foolish attempt to just bodily guard you against the bullets. He wasn't expecting me to work with Mycroft, to g-gain anyone's support."

His speech was getting slurred again, weariness hitting him like a hammer, and Sherlock allowed him to rest a bit, head leaning slightly on Sherlock's shoulder.

_The most important thing now is to get us over the ocean. Wherever we land finally, we'll be fine, as long as it's an EU country. England would be the best, Ireland quite fine, it's just a helicopter ride from home, France tolerable - John has friends there, doesn't he? Spain would be acceptable, too. We could take a train home, quietly, like normal people._

_Now how can we get aboard some appropriate plane without drawing more attention than required? What can one tall gangly detective and one short stocky doctor of military persuasion do when on foreign soil and needing to get home in an unofficial manner?_

His eyes turned towards the freight part of the airport and men crowding the loading and unloading areas.

 _Hmm_.

 

#

 

The men at the bar near the cargo terminal were a mix of all nationalities, all over the Americas and all over Europe (other continents too, but that wasn't the point at the moment). The priority would be to find someone flying back to Britain or any neighbouring country. He would take Germany without really protesting too much, if he could convince the crew to smuggle them onboard.

He sat John at a table with care, leaning his crutch on the table next to his hand and went to the bar, looking at the mixed-language menu.

"A tea, please," he smiled wanly at the girl behind the counter. "And some bis... cookies. Chocolate chip ones."

"Don't try to drink what the locals call tea," a voice from his side advised in an Estuary accent so strong Sherlock felt a momentary pang of pain for missing Lestrade so. "It's made from teabags that had been sitting in the sun for ages. The only thing worth drinking here is coffee," the man winked at him and raised his cup.

"It's for my friend," Sherlock nodded back to where John was sitting, leaning slightly on the wall. "He hadn't had proper tea for months now and I promised him he will before we start on getting him back home again."

"Oh," the tall, muscled man turned and surveyed John's slumped figure. "Is he ill? Doesn't look very well."

"He isn't very well," Sherlock smiled thinly. "Unfortunately can't do much for him here, and who knows how long before I can get him home... PTSD from Afghanistan, you see. Makes him react to things too harshly and got him in trouble with a local gang. Picked off his documents and everything... And the consulate... Meh. Band of paper-pushers."

"Here you are," the barmaid set a tray laden with tea - indeed looking more like slightly yellowed water - and chocolate chip cookies and accepted the banknotes he counted off a thick roll.

"Let me take to him," he smiled apologetically at his interlocutor. "He is pretty banged-up, so..." he nodded at John's slumping figure. "Need to get his blood sugar up."

The man followed him - perfect! - with his coffeecup in one hand and a container of bread sticks in the other.

"I'd like to join you, if you don't mind. I'm Robert, by the way. Robert Stone."

Sherlock looked at him, as if doubtful.

"I'll have to ask John," he chewed his lip. "And I'm Scott, Scott Williams."

John looked up at them in confusion as he deposited his tray on the table.

"John, there is some of what the locals call tea. I'm afraid it may not be up to your standards, but at least it's warm."

"Who...?"

"This is Robert. He is the one who kindly warned me about the tea. Do you think he could join us?"

John blinked slowly, frowning at the tea.

"Yeah, sure, why not. I'm not going to be a very g-good company, but I'll be h-happy to listen to you two. Sit, sit."

Robert glanced at 'Scott' who nodded imperceptibly.

"John had had a very bad day, finished with a visit at the consulate, where we were taken for some terrorists, because the gate kept beeping on him."

John patted his own shoulder.

"They couldn't understand I wasn't wearing any metal _on_ myself, but I have it _in_ myself," he explained sorrowfully. "Brought it back from Afghanistan with me and hadn't been able to get rid of it since."

"That's shitty, man," Robert swallowed half of his coffee and watched as John slowly drank his mediocre tea. "You have anyone waiting for you at home, at least? Someone who will take care of you once you get there?"

John hesitated.

"Harriet has been missing you," Sherlock provided quietly. "His sister," he explained for Robert's benefit. "They had quarrelled before he left and had been a bit... Well."

"He means to say she told me she never wants to see me again if I join the Army," John said tonelessly. "Good to know me getting abducted when doing charity work made her realise she misses me, but I suppose I will rather stay with some of my fellow vets. If I can, I will work at the veteran centre and they will make sure I am taken care of."

"You were _abducted_?" Robert blurted out. "Why the hell didn't anyone hear about it?"

"D-doctors Without Borders," John shrugged. "Apparently our work isn't very n-newsworthy anymore. T-they don't talk about us being killed or robbed or, well, t-taken off the trail without a trace. T-turns out I pissed someone off weeks before and they took exception to the way I r-reacted when they appeared in the village I was visiting. T-they waited until one day I was walking to the patients alone an... Snap. The d-doctor is gone, no footprint and no sign of anyone being in the area."

"Well, they let him out in the end, and at the same time I was dispatched by our friends to find him," Sherlock shook his head in mock disbelief. "Not sure what I was meant to do, but I found him quite by accident and now we are trying to get back home."

Robert watched them, entranced.

"Well..." he drained the dregs of his coffee. "I must say, you two are something else," he declared. "Also," the wink was so broad and obvious it was a wonder he didn't strain his lid muscles. "My husband would have never forgiven me if I told him I've left the two of you in this predicament. So... what would you think about finding yourself in Surrey in ten hours?"

John frowned and squinted at their new 'friend'.

"Are you having us on?" he asked slowly. "How could we...?"

"Easy. We are flying near-empty back to the old England today - in two hours, in fact. We are almost loaded and there is a lot of space left _and_ I could smuggle you two onboard without much fuss."

Sherlock didn't emit a whoop of happiness only because that would have made their obviously kind companion suspicious, but instead caught John's hand and gave it a squeeze.

"If there is anything you need to get before we leave, do it now," Robert advised. "Meet me here in half an hour and be ready."

"I don't think John is up to much walking..." Sherlock prevaricated. "But maybe I could give you a few reals and you could buy one thing for us?"

Robert looked from him to John (who was looking slightly better now, but it wasn't that much of an improvement) and back and nodded slowly.

Sherlock hoped the purchase they needed wouldn't tax Robert too much, but they would need to get John comfortable. John slowly ate one cookie and leaned forward, hiding his face in his hands as Sherlock counted out several thousands reals.

They were going home.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flying home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was rather hard.

"I need your help."

"Do you have him?"

"How long have you known?"

She huffed impatiently.

"A few days. It was there all along, he was sending you a message with every... Sherlock, _do you have him_?"

"Yes. He is in a very bad shape. I... I can't bear to talk to Mycroft now, but we'll need medical attention, immediately. Well, in five hours or so. Discreet. The airport in Surrey. And I need someone to ensure Mycroft had followed my request. And to clear this airplane for landing."

"Mrs Hudson is in the MI6 building, I saw her, and Greg is 'on a prolonged leave'. No idea what that means, but I think your brother had something to do with that."

"Good. At least he can be trusted to do that much. Are _you_ in a safe place? If none of the others is available..."

"What's going on?" she demanded, a bit forcefully, but it seemed to make him stop rambling at last.

"John made a deal with your former boyfriend."

"With... what? Why would he do that?"

"Moriarty promised he wouldn't touch any of the others if John committed a suicide. Burning the heart out of me. He was supposed to make it as convincing as possible that I was at fault."

She choked.

"He definitely managed! But, but, what..."

"Moriarty focused on me, apparently - I think it must have been him who had been following me when I visited John's grave - but as I'm not there now, he may have switched, and you are the most likely target. Do you have a safe place to stay?"

"I'm in your so-called office, actually. Your brother had them set up a field bed for me here after I told him what I guessed. Once you called last night, he just had some more of my things delivered and then he disappeared. My phone is routed through some secured server here, too."

"Well, so you're just as safe as anything can be in a building full of spies. Can't make it any better... Shh, shh, John, I'm here, come on... Molly, I'll call you later. Come on, John, open... Yes, lovely. Do you remember where you are?"

She heard an indistinct, broken answer in a familiar voice.

John Watson was alive.

She sighed, pushed herself up from the desk she had been given and went to look for Anthea.

 

###

 

He dropped the satellite phone Robert had provided him with - connected to the plane's systems - and sat on the mattress where he had secured John as best as he could against the movement of the cargo airplane and the chill of the hold. He threaded his fingers through the graying blonde tresses and checked John's pulse. Slightly elevated, just like the body temperature. A bottle of water waited in the cooler bag, just next to John's other side.

"You have to drink a bit" he said softly, bringing it to John's lips. "Just a bit, and I'll let you sleep."

John obediently sipped the water, but turned his face away after swallowing barely half a glass.

"I'll be sick if I drink too much" he said haltingly, but clearly. "Where are we?"

"A cargo plane, heading to a private landing strip in south Surrey. Do you remember Robert? He helped us to get on board. You were pretty much out of it for most of the time."

"Robert. Good," John's head grew heavy on his shoulder.

"John... I'm not sure what will happen when we get home."

A frown.

"I will have to sleep on the couch," came the tired reply. "I can't climb the stairs now."

He responded by pulling John into an even tighter embrace.

"You won't be sleeping on the couch - not with your injuries - I don't want you to... That's not what I meant. Moriarty will be still waiting for me to come back. He must have noticed my disappearance - I missed my visit to... well, he is surely..."

John sighed and turned slightly, as much as the soft restrains over the sleeping bag allowed.

"You should find yourself a safe place" he said softly. "I will manage."

_This is something John would have said._

_No, John_ _**had** _ _said it._

_John?_

_Idiot, he is right here._

_This is the wrong John. I have to make him better._

He brushed John's cheek with his his knuckles.

"It's not like this" he whispered into the darkness of the hold. "If we part now, nobody will give us the third chance."

Blue eyes, frowny forehead.

"What the hell are you..."

"I will not leave you."

"You mean, like I've left you?" the words were bitter and full of self-hatred.

"That, too. But also like I've left you, before. I might have been there in body, but I've anyway left you alone, so many times. Not anymore, do you hear, John?" he leaned closer, reaching out to cup the pale, sunken cheek with his hand.

And saw John shrinking away, as far away as he could in the confines of the sleeping bag.

Shrinking away.

 

_"Another b-beating. And there were other things, too. You can guess."_

_Only I didn't guess. I ignored it and pushed forward._

_I am, in fact, the worst kind of idiot._

_My poor, brave soldier._

 

He slumped down to the mattress, turning on his side to look at his soldier's profile.

"John, I... no, I mean, you don't have to do anything. I just want to..." he took a shuddering breath. "I want you to understand you always have a place at 221B. All your things are still there, by the way. I didn't have time to... I couldn't bear to be there, so I paid for the flat and slept in MI6 building. Mrs Hudson dusts it from time to time, and she threw away the most lively experiments, but I asked her to leave it all as it was..."

"Oh" John's small exclamation was full of pain, but also something else. "I didn't want you to..."

"Shh. It is done. I have you now, here, you're alive, I am alive" he sighed, stretching out on the mattress next to John. "We just need to find new ways of doing things. Until you regain your mobility, you can stay in the MI6 offices too, I suppose. You are working for them after all. And there are lifts there and everything you may need. I got assigned an apartment inside the building, so if they can't find any more space, you can stay in the same suite. There is a basic medical team available, so even if they can't help with the bigger issues, maybe they can help with the simpler stuff, like any wounds that you couldn't reach yourself. They can tell us if you have to go to a hospital or no. Or maybe we can get a doctor assigned to you there, for security."

He knew he was babbling - obviously, John would _have_ to go to a hospital. There was a lot of damage under these soft coverings, he knew it now - by the way John held himself, his back and shoulders had to be a nightmare. But talking about home or something that could serve as home calmed John down and Sherlock was not above telling a fairytale if it kept John calm and stable.

"Is there a shower in it...?" John's voice had a dreamy, wistful tone.

"A bathtub, actually. And a reasonably big bed. A mattress maybe a shade too soft, but still nice. Adjustable light. It's an internal room, so I usually went full blackout - it allows me to sleep most effectively - but you could set it to low and be able to see what is where."

"And where would you be?"

He couldn't work out whether the question was just an obligatory, general question of plans, specific...

"Probably upstairs, working."

John drew another breath and looked up at him.

"Could you stay in the apartment and work from there?

He frowned, looking straight into these blue eyes, spotted with golden brown.

"I suppose I could, at least at times... Would you like me to?"

"I..." John shook his head. "I don't think I should stay alone. I don't feel very well if I can't hear other people..."

_Isolation in Bolivia._

_They had left him alone except for the time when they were torturing him._

_We'll have to make sure I can stay in his room during the night when he ends up at a hospital._

"I'll bring the reports to read them downstairs, as much as I can. And I'll ask them to set up an intercom, so you can always call me when I have to meet others."

The truth was, he didn't want to leave John alone even for a second.

Reasonably speaking, he would _have to_ let go of him at the hospital, at some point, but that didn't mean he was going to _like_ it.

What he _wanted_ was to go back to Baker Street, shut the door behind them, take a shower to wash the last year and a half off the both of them and curl up under the duvet on his bed, holding on to John with both hands. It was obviously a fantasy, but he indulged in it for a fleeting moment, as his slow, caressing touch calmed John with every breath. He knew his... his friend required proper medical attention and he would have to stay in a hospital, probably for weeks on end, if they even managed to do anything about his injuries at all - at that stage, after that much time, who knew if there was anything to be done to help - but he wished they could resolve it by themselves, just the two of them. Like always.

"Sherlock" he barely heard John's whimper over the hum of the engines. "I don't want to go to MI6. I know we'll have to, and it will be safer, but..." he took a shuddering breath. "I want to g-go home. I want my chair and my clothes. I want... I want the sofa, and our table, and I want tea and... I want to hear you play, at least once," he paused, swallowing laboriously. "Will you play for me? Then..." he paused and swallowed "...then I can go. I just need to hear you, once more... And then I will be OK. Just play for me once, before I go. Please? Will you? Before I leave? Something small, doesn't have to be anything special, of course..." John's eyes were glassy and absent as he looked up at the plane's ceiling, his lips pressed into a trembling line, like a child who is trying very bravely not to cry as they plead for help. "Just once, please? A goodbye... And I... I can go... then... Sherlock? Will you... play for me...?"


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We're approaching Britain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, let me just dry my nose... Damn, another one of these.  
> Be warned.

He had to keep it together. He couldn't afford to fall apart, not as long as he was the only link between John and whoever was waiting for them at the other end. Whoever Mycroft managed to scare up to take care of his wayward agents.

"You will be better cared for if we go to the offices," it didn't make much sense to convince John to go to a _hospital_ if even the MI6 office was so terrifying for him "But if you really don't want to, we can go home. And I will play for you, whatever you want. But why would you be leaving? John, you're not making any sense..."

His knuckles brushed against John's face again, checking the temperature.

"I..." John's rasped and stilled, breathing heavily. "Go. Can't... can't run. Walk slowly. No help. No use. Not anymore."

_He's burning up._

_It's not him, it's the fever talking._

_It's five more hours to Surrey._

_We're in the middle of the fucking Atlantic and he is burning up and I'm an idiot who didn't pack ibuprofen._

"I am _not_ leaving you, John Watson. And I'm not letting you go. Not again. Not ever" he mumbled, untying the top restraint holding the sleeping bag contraption in place, dragging John's hands up and out of the cover, giving him more freedom of movement and allowing his body to cool a little. "What the hell had happened? He was fine, just tired, all that time. He was..."

_Holding himself together with the shreds of his strength. I came and the stress levels changed. The system can't cope with the overload. Option two, system held out in the stress situation and now, seeing the potential resolution offered, the discipline was loosened and everything is crashing. Option three, the stress of the escape overloaded the system..._

_Whichever it is, his body chose to give in, right now, right here._

_And all I have is a package of biscuits, a box of water bottles and a nearly-empty cargo hold._

_Fuck._

He felt more than saw John's gaze on his face.

"I thought I dreamed it" there was some chilling, absent quality to these slow, words. "It happened all the time, you know. I was reading your reports and I kept hearing your voice, explaining the reasoning behind them. And then I saw you in that cell, all the time. Tried not to talk to you, they would have thought I've gone crazy. I knew you were a hallucination, but I really hope you are not one now. Because if you are, then I'm alone in a cargo hold of an unknown aeroplane."

"No, John, I'm quite real" he threaded his fingers through John's. "But you are feverish so you may be seeing things a bit differently now."

"Ah. That's why I'm feeling so weird."

"Probably being in said cargo hold isn't helping. And I had to strap you in to avoid new injuries."

"It's all moving a bit. Is it moving? Are we flying?" again, the unfocused gaze found him and there was something in the way John asked that made him seem twenty years younger. Open and vulnerable, making his heart constrict painfully in both terror and strange sweetness.

"We are flying, John, so yes, it is moving. You can feel the engines working and sometimes everything moves to the side when we hit a turbulence. We are now over the ocean, going to Surrey. And when we land in Surrey, there will be a car waiting for us. Molly is setting it up with Mycroft. She befriended Anthea, you know? They are rather scary together. And the car will take us to London, and there will be doctors waiting to see you. And if you want, we can go home and you can have a proper lie-in, stay in bed as long as you wish. And I will play whatever you want. We'll order something you like, maybe a soup or rice, to build up your strength slowly. And there will be a doctor who will come to see you at home, so you won't have to stay in a hospital too long, if they find anything at all" he brought the scar-lined hand up to his lips and pressed a light kiss to the base of John's thumb. Looking up, he saw his friend watching him with wide eyes. "And I will make sure" his voice broke, just a bit. "I will make sure nobody will ever touch you again."

"B-but, Sherlock..."

"You took care of me for so long. You saved my life - you've been saving my life for the last twenty months, every day. Now it's my turn, John. Now, drink a bit. Just a bit, because I have no idea if there is any loo on board..." he tried smiling, but John didn't reciprocate. "But you need water. Your temperature is much too high."

"H-hospital" John murmured, his other hand slowly creeping up to touch his face.

"No hospital. Unless absolutely required. They won't let me in."

"Mycroft. Papers. Authorisation."

"Not sure he would be let in either. Technically you are dead, so we can't be sure..."

"Not Harry. Not Harry."

"No, we won't let Harry know yet. Not until you are better."

"Good."

John's hand fell from where he was touching his forehead and grasped Sherlock's own with dry, warm fingers.

"Stay?"

"I will stay" he pressed another kiss to the scarred palm. "If you want me, I will stay."

"Used to hear you" John's tone was now lower, huskier but steadier, his voice not breaking as much. "All the time. I looked at something, some detail, and I heard you telling me what it was. I wrote them d-down, then I destroyed them. Mycroft showed me how t-to record everything in my head. I didn't need notes. Kept a murderboard, like you used to make, on a wall, in my head."

"You..." he blinked slowly.

"He explained to me how this... method worked. Walked me through it, step by step" John sighed, his head rolling to the side a bit. "It seemed crazy, but I t-tried. At..." he coughed weakly. "At the beginning, I tried with a deck of cards - could barely get them all... under five minutes... Got everything right after a few tries. But had to get better. I p-practised. Finally..." he drew in a breath and held it. "I put stuff on the shelves in our sitting room. Between books, in some of them. Used DVDs as loci for situations that I needed to d-describe, to... to transcribe the dialogue..." he made an abortive gesture with his hand. "Not good enough to store a bigger picture, but enough... to see the patterns..." he trailed off, mouth hanging slightly open, visibly tired by the long explanation.

Sherlock swallowed around something that grew in his throat.

"You...Mycroft showed you the method of loci?" a nod. "And you practised with a full deck of cards, randomised, to check how it worked?" a nod. "And after 'a few tries' you managed to memorise the whole deck under five minutes?" a frown and a nod.

He couldn't stand it. He couldn't stay separated anymore. Carefully, cautiously, minding John's injuries old and new, he sneaked closer and placed his jacket under the soldier's neck, turning his own, long and lanky body, to surround the smaller figure. John didn't make a sound, but he didn't flinch, which Sherlock took as an encouragement.

He traced invisible lines on the fabric of John's shirt with just his fingertips, feeling the heat coming of the soldier in waves.

"Did Mycroft ever tell you how long it takes to achieve this for people who train for these ridiculous card memorising championships?" he huffed into the silver-blonde hair. "Weeks and weeks. Sometimes two months before they get under five minutes."

John squirmed a bit, turning his head to look at Sherlock with a slight frown, eyes glassy and unfocused.

"But..." he started, voice very steady now, if softer. "Once Mycroft walked me through it, it seemed... simple. Not obvious or immediately easy to use, as such, because I started with associating things with bones in human body - one thing I _do_ know by heart - and he suggested that it's easier when the elements linked are some kind of c-containers. So I used the shelves, and when it wasn't enough, the books. Then I added the DVDs and photos on the mantel. Well, we don't have any, but I used it as a container for several crucial scenes. Then I put things on the stairs, each step has a fact attached..." he shivered, just a bit. "It took me a while to produce a reliable linked board, it now takes almost the entire surface of the room... Things on the table, on the kitchen counter... Even... the cabinets..." he trailed off, breathing laboriously.

"You..." Sherlock traced down to John's protruding ribs. "You built your memorisation based solely on our flat contents?"

John made something like a shrug.

"Once I started adding things to the shelves and then inside the books, it seemed easier to associate facts with things I already know than to build a whole imaginary palace, like some do" there was a shadow of a smirk on his face. "I went into more detail - furniture, shelves, books, even crockery. The food cans have facts on them, too..." he closed his eyes and shivered again, making Sherlock tighten his hold.

"So... you carried all the information collected in it, until you had a chance to type the report?"

"Mhm."

"And you made notes and then destroyed them..."

"Better visualisation. Written in c-code, too. The same principle as... making cheat sheet... for an exam even if you-you don't plan to use it - just the act of making it helps you... helps to reinforce certain facts in your brain. This way I could then... r-re-op-pen the same r-report..." he swallowed and shivered again. "Cold."

"You are feverish," Sherlock sighed. "And I didn't bring anything to get it down..."

"Good," John's teeth chattered. "Blood. Coagulation. Uncertain."

Sherlock's eyes widened and he held his friend even closer.

"Probably," John sighed. "Immune system compro... No idea. Drugs. Too much time in cold. Some wounds... not good."

"Hospital," Sherlock murmured. "If..."

John shivered and burrowed closer to him.

"Home," he breathed. "Sherlock, I'm not... Not getting out of... out of this one..." his body was wrecked by something akin to small earthquake.

"John," Sherlock pushed the slightly sweaty head up, forcing John to look at him. "John, stay with me. Stay with me long enough to get you to a doctor. You have... You have to stay. I can't do it again."

"Can't," a small reply came. "Can't focus enough. I'm... like a lousy puzzle. All pieces coming apart."

"No no no" he felt another shiver going through both of them. "You are _not allowed_ to just leave me like this."

"Silly Sherlock," there was a hint of a smile in this that made him happy in such a sad way and he caught that feeling with all his might and held it close. "Can't forbid me to die. Doesn't work like this."

"I will do... Anything. Just keep it together, John. Keep it together. Just a few more hours. In Surrey, there will be a doctor. Fuck it, I'll call Molly, make it an ambulance and a team. Full service. Just stay with me. Damn it, John, _STAY WITH ME_."

He fumbled for the phone and brought it up to his ear.

"Sherlock?"

"Molly, he is in a bad way" he couldn't recognise his own voice. "Failing fast. No idea where we are..."

"Two hours out" came the answer in his brother's voice. "Redirecting your landing to the City now. Tell your pilot to just bloody land where we tell him to and he will be fuelled up and let out immediately, no questions asked. How is John?"

"Weak" he swallowed around the next words. "Fever so high I'm not sure this is not going to lead to brain damage. Shivers. He says he is cold."

"Sh..lock" the lolling head turned to him. "Say 'hi' to the gang for me. Tell'em it 'as and 'onour..."

"No, John. You are _not_ allowed to say goodbyes this way!"

There was a noise from the other side of the connection, his brother's imperious tones ordering people around.

"Mycroft, we can't just land at City and show him to everyone" he hissed into the phone. "He will be..."

"Perfectly safe" Mycroft shot quickly. "There will be an armoured vehicle with ambulance fittings waiting on the tarmac and a team of MI6 medics to assist. The Bart's is alerted to the possibility and security is making a place there, in case an emergency treatment or a surgery is needed. We will not let anything happen to him."

"Mycroft...!"

"Give him the phone, little brother."

Cautiously, trying not to jostle John too much, he placed the heavy headset at the soldier's ear.

"M" John only vocalised one letter and then seemed to be listening to something from the other side. "M. No. I'm... not good" he finally whispered. "Sh'lock is... worried."

Some more noises from the other side.

"But..."

A short word.

John blinked and looked up at Sherlock, his eyes filling with tears.

"I'll try."

He picked up the phone again and curled his free hand around John's shoulders.

"Mycroft?"

"You need to keep him awake and focused, Sherlock. Fluids, I suppose, you have. Not much in the medicine area. Nothing to bring the fever down?"

"John is afraid they could affect his coagulation" Sherlock refrained from admitting his failure to prepare.

"But you anyway don't have anything useful. Make cold compresses, if you have enough water. Check his kidney function at some point. Blood in urine and so on."

He gritted his teeth.

"And keep him awake. Just under two hours more now, we are clearing the airspace for you. Talk to him. Ask him questions. Make him think, make him laugh, just keep him awake. Do anything you can."

"I get it. You have the team ready, I have no idea what is needed, but they better be prepared for the worst. Mycroft..." he inhaled spasmodically. "I can't lose him again."

"You won't. Just get him here."

 

#

 

The small plane adjusted its course when Sherlock confirmed that the orders from the London City airport were, in fact, valid. A corridor was created, set smartly between airplanes delayed at start, airplanes ordered to veer just a tiny bit off-course, airplanes redirected to make another circle around their destination and airplanes plainly sent to another airport.

His brother had done all he could to salvage the situation but it was now up to Sherlock to get his charge alive to the ground.

He kept John awake for two and a half hours it took them to navigate to London and negotiate the perpetually too-short landing strip of the City airport. As they were approaching for a touchdown for the third time, John barely keeping himself together between the nausea, fever and pressure changes, Sherlock held on to him with both hands, babbling about everything he could think of, telling him how proud he was and how brave John was and _please, please, do not die on me, we're home and you can't just die on me, John, and please, please, stay with me, because I can't imagine going on without you and will you please marry me, John, John, can you hear me?_

And he was holding John's face in his hands for seconds that felt like eons, waiting for the anger that should have come after him being so brutally honest and, after all, maybe John had allowed himself to be held, and hugged and even cuddled, if one would look at the whole situation in detail, but he was still very much Not Gay, was he?

Sherlock had already tried putting their previous few hours into the context of their relationship as friends and platonic flatmates, but he simply couldn't, it wasn't true, it had never been true, and right then, right there, on the floor of a cargo plane that had never been supposed to land on the London City airport, something had broken and his mouth had gone on without any control of his brain - only at the orders of his heart - and he had blurted out The Question.

And now he was lying down on the foamy mattress, holding John's face and praying for some way to reverse time and stop himself from asking that one question that had the power to damage everything.

And suddenly the plane was touching the tarmac, jostling them in an almighty jump, and he held on to John to cushion their movements and felt John's weak hand tracing his biceps.

"Oh, Sherlock..." John smiled, closing his eyes. "I'd marry you in an flash if you were real... It's nice of you to ask, love... But don't worry... I won't tell the real one... you did it... He would be... so disappointed... I tried to keep it a secret, you see," the smile was so sweet, curling up John's parchment-dry lips, it cut straight into Sherlock's heart. "That's why I did it all, you see."

The plane slowly taxied to the stop.

"He is... after all..." John's face brightened with unnatural pallor. "Married to the... Work, isn't he?"


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally home.  
> Or rather, in London.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little less angst. But not totally free of it.  
> Almost sure I got the medical part correct.
> 
> If you see any weird sentences or plot holes, let me know in the comments - I was editing this way too long.

The cargo door opened with a clang and two green-clad men carried a stretcher up to them.

"Mr Holmes? Please go down to the car, we'll wheel..."

He found himself unable to let go of John's hand.

"I _am_ here, John," he said, leaning closer. "I really _am_ here and I really did ask you. I mean it, all of it, John. John?"

"Mr Holmes, we have to take him to the transport and let the plane leave," the MI6 medic pulled him up. "Let us pick him up. You take his things and get inside, we will be at Barts in minutes. Your brother is waiting for us there."

 

#

 

Mycroft.

Hospital.

Anthea and Molly.

Molly, hugging him with all her might.

Mycroft, talking to him about something.

He handed over whatever was in his hands, Anthea collected it deftly.

He was stripped of his windbreaker and the pullover he was wearing underneath and a cup of tea was pushed into his hand. A blanket - not an ugly orange shock blanket, but something as soft as a cloud and as warm as a radiator - was pulled over his shoulders. He sipped the tea.

Actual proper tea.

He promised John a lifetime of proper tea. Didn't he?

"Robert Stone," he found himself saying into the air. "He..."

"A good man. Veteran from Iraq. Got shot down during a so-called routine patrol. Works in cargo shipping now, as we witnessed. I will... Watch him."

Sherlock nodded slowly.

"John is in there...." he pointed to the ICU door. "They said... Pneumothorax... Risk of empyema, too."

"I know."

His brother sat next to him, umbrella neatly lined with the backrest of the chair.

"Moriarty?"

"Sherlock, you should focus..."

"Moriarty."

Mycroft sighed softly.

"We are looking for him. Half of my team is on the surveillance, searching for any traces. He... He managed to create some kind of alternative persona for himself and we are still looking for the details, I'm afraid. He has a lot of clout with various institutions and societies in the city, including ones less than enthusiastic about official protocol. Not all of them respond eagerly to our efforts."

Sherlock only closed his eyes and shook his head.

"He will try to get to John. Me. Lestrade."

"The DI is 'on loan' to the Interpol right now. Working in one of the most secure offices on the continent. Mrs Hudson is being unbearably sweet to the agents in the MI6 holding facility. Did you know she was a card shark? I had to tell them to stop playing for money with her, they kept losing too often. And Miss Hooper is right here, with Anthea and about a half-dozen guards. Our parents are, well, also hopefully quite safe, or I will be having words with the chief of the security at the White House. Unless either you or John start insisting that you have to go haring off somewhere..."

He stopped at Sherlock's harsh hiss.

They could only hope one day John would be up to 'haring off' anywhere.

 

#

 

There were going to be tests. MRI, EKG, EEG and other three-letter acronyms. Blood, vials of blood were carried away, John's head was shaved, partly for tests, partly for hygiene. There was another X-ray, immediately leading to some more discussions and two more specialists being called in.

There was an IV of antibiotics set up and a CAT scan scheduled and people were talking about John, over John and around John. Sherlock was the only one focused on John as a person, not as a case. John was not a case.

The fever spiked. New drugs were pushed in the IV and Sherlock cut off the input from the doctors, turning all his attention to their patient. In a short time, the fever eased and John started, slowly, to look if not better, then at least less wretched. It took him hours to actually start resembling his own self again - face lax in sleep, looking as young as he used to on some of his old before-Army photos. Still too thin, still bruised from the flight, still not breathing well enough to ensure proper oxygenation... But he was getting there. It allowed Sherlock to slightly loosen the tight control he had kept over his senses and to finally have a look at the world around them.

What surprised Sherlock was that apart from all the varied and expected pulmonologists and cardiologists, there was an additional person present now. A woman introduced as a physical therapist, doctor Petersen. She was maybe ten years older than John, tall and muscled - obviously, her profession required a lot of physical labour - her arms covered with tattoos... Hah, interesting. A depiction of the RAMC coat of arms on the right and a caduceus adorning the left biceps.

She was the one who started referring to John as Captain Watson first and soon the others followed suit, even ones who weren't ex-military - or at least not as obviously as she was.

That first evening, after John had been placed in his room, she was the one to do the examination (just after the leading doctor checked the oxygen levels and confirmed that the antibiotics seemed to be working) and had been included in every doctors' conference from that point onward. As Sherlock had been allowed to stay with John, she was the one he saw most often. He tried working out the reason at first, but after two hours he gave up and approached her directly when she came with yet another result to be added to the thick ream of paper.

"They asked me in because I know him. Or, at least, his old injuries," she frowned at the chart she was holding. "He probably won't remember me, but I was present when he was operated on for the first time back in Afghanistan. Ugly thing. Did he regain full mobility in that arm? It looked rather promising at the time."

Sherlock swallowed the angry words that were escaping him and simply shook his head.

"Ah, well. We will try better this time. You just need to make sure he takes care of himself. Too many lonely vets slip through the cracks and then nobody has time to track them down... Well. First, we put him back together and then we help him pull himself up. Your task," she glanced from over her glasses "is to make sure he knows he has someone to go home to."

He nodded slowly.

"Now, since I see here you are his authorised contact, what can you tell me about his recent medical history?"

Sherlock found himself in the unusual position of one being interrogated, ruthlessly, in detail, stripping him - or rather, his connection to John - naked. She was poking at and examining every detail. Any mention of a meal missed or an all-nighter pulled made the woman's eyes narrow in annoyance but the description of John's physical fitness sent her eyebrows to meet her hairline.

"How he could have gone and done all this is beyond my imagination," she admitted finally. "The best we predicted was that he would end up doing some kind of mild part-time GP work. The pressure a trauma surgeon's tasks require seemed to be in direct contrast to the PTSD he had developed and then he goes and does _that_. What were his superiors even thinking? How was he even hired...?"

Sherlock trailed his fingers over John's shaved head.

"He volunteered. They had noone else who was that motivated."

"They shouldn't have let him do that. The last time I saw him, he was still limping, and they weren't having a lot of luck curing that."

"Idiots," he scoffed softly. "He was running painlessly barely a day after we met... He just needed a purpose."

"Mhm," came from the bed. "Bloody madman..."

One blue eye was cracked open, looking up at him.

"John?"

"Captain Watson?"

"Not anymore," came the quiet answer. "B-but... Where am I?"

"Wait a moment," the tall woman pressed a button and soon the room was invaded by a small contingent of nurses and a general physician called in to check John over. The moment the first person approached the bed, Sherlock found himself with an armful of a curled-up soldier.

"Stop it right there!" he managed to utter, halting the oncoming crowd. "Wait, he... PTSD, idiots! John? John, can you breathe for me? Just like that. John, you have to allow them to check you... maybe one person at a time, would you, people? Should not be _that_ hard to think logically...!"

"And who are _you_ , mister?" one of the nurses tried to step closer, but was blocked by the physical therapist.

Sherlock felt like snapping an answer that would not gain him any fans among the personnel, but the feeling of John wrapped around his side was enough to keep him tethered.

"His emergency contact. Look through the documents, I'm sure it's there somewhere. I suppose you _do_ have a high enough clearance to work with him? If you do, you should know who _I_ am."

The doctor straightened a bit.

"Indeed, Mr Holmes. I am sorry. But we have to check Mr Watson's vitals."

"Captain Watson," the therapist corrected, nearly unison with Sherlock's "Doctor Watson."

"Ah-I see... Very well then, Doctor Watson, can you please sit up?"

 

#

 

John sat up. Slowly. John allowed himself to be checked over, prodded, pricked with a needle and subjected to a barrage of questions. Hesitantly.

John allowed himself to be handled only as long as Sherlock was sitting next to him.

Preferably holding his hand.

"We have contacted the plastic surgery department and they will be sending someone over to check on the scars that are the largest issue - starting with your feet and back. There is also a neurologist coming tomorrow, first thing in the morning, at..." the nurse checked the chart "eight. He isn't going to be happy, but he should be grateful we didn't call him in today."

"It's chronic," John offered indifferently. "I'd rather talk to... someone awake."

"Well, that was doctor Balser's choice, too. That is your main doctor, by the way. Doctor Petersen will be however your primary point of contact..."

"L-Lana Petersen?" John frowned. "L-Lieutenant Petersen..."

"That would be me," the sharp-faced therapist answered from the doorway. She had left at some point when John was going through the general check-up and returned with yet more documents.

"P-Petersen..." John chewed on his lip for a moment. "Kabul. You... you were... Oh... Sherlock? Help me up a bit?"

He handed John the bed remote and carefully wrapped the shorter fingers around the plastic case. Cautiously, slowly, they brought the bed to a reclining position.

"Ah," he felt John exhaling with satisfaction. "Yes, Lana Petersen. Good. Good. It's... Sherlock, say hello to the woman... who had me down on a table... screaming like a banshee... and the only thing she wanted... was for me to... move my shoulder."

"Ah, so you do remember me," she smirked. "Didn't think you would. There were many of us prodding you to do things you didn't want to."

"Not all of you made me... mad enough to exercise j-just so that I have a ch-chance one day to strangle you in your sleep."

"Well, as long as you have your long-term goals sorted out..." she smiled. And John smiled back.

Sherlock's hand trembled.

Were they bloody flirting?

"Mhm..." John looked up and his eyes lost a bit of their focus. "Sherlock, could you please turn the morphine down, just a bit? I feel like I'm floating and my brain is doing weird... Yeah. That. Oh, fuck, that's..."

He turned his head and breathed slowly into the pillow.

"OK, hit me then," he demanded, his voice hoarse. "How bad?"

"You do have pneumonia - actually you were verging on general system sepsis, hence the amount of drugs being pumped into you now. Your left lung collapsed, probably during one of the approaches to the airport. Cargo holds - not so good for your health when your system is already compromised. It was the last call for your kidneys, a day more and you'd be looking at a transplant or being hooked up to a machine for the rest of your life. Your liver is in a good state, everything else in a normal range. You are severely anaemic, so iron supplements and other micro-elements are provided through the IV. Wide-spectrum antibiotics, too," she tapped the chart. "You can have a look at it later. I won't try to hide your diagnosis from you, you are the GP, out of the two of us. Basically, you were on your last legs and you got here just in time."

"Thanks to Sherlock," John's grip on his fingers tightened.

He blinked, looking down at their clasped hands.

"Ah, I..."

"My detective, at a loss for words," the soldier smiled at him. "I _know_ what you did. Thank you."

He sat there, stunned at the radiance of John's tired face.

 

#

 

The neurologist who arrived in the morning was a no-nonsense bespectacled young man who had carefully surveyed the damage done to John's body. Sherlock gave them the illusion of privacy, sitting with his side to John and maintaining the needed contact by holding onto his shoulder, but he couldn't ignore murmured names of damaged parts that the doctor was listing.

"We will need ultrasounds done of each joint and probably some additional imagining for your hands," he shook his head over the x-rays. "What was the tool used...?"

"A box knife," Sherlock answered when John seemed to be struck mute. "He was held in a cell and cut up with a box knife and then forced to sew it up himself. John, may I?" he pointed to his left hand. "He had to staple the skin together with an office stapler, so..."

A sharp curse escaped the man standing over them.

"And you are left-handed, Doctor Watson? We would focus on the dominant hand then..."

"He shoots with his right," Sherlock pointed out. "But I suppose the left one would be a reasonable priority."

"Shoots...? Ah, I see. Military. Well, that changes things, a bit. But we will still start with the left one, indeed. Just to get the harder part done..." he shook his head, going through the chart. "We will have to wait for the pneumonia to clear and the last surgery to be confirmed as successful before we even consider what next, but we can run diagnostics even now, something non-invasive and perfectly safe. Will you be fine with it, Doctor Watson?"

John nodded slowly, but looked up at Sherlock.

"Just take into account that I may fall asleep at the drop of the hat," he said finally. "I've only been back in England for a day now, so..." he trailed off and shrugged.

"Can't this wait?" Sherlock asked finally. "Is there anything that is going to get _worse_ immediately?"

The neurologist shook his head reluctantly.

"Not at all, in fact. There is no acute state that we should deal with right now."

"Very well. Be back in a week," Sherlock rose and directed the man out of the room. "Prepare. Look at his results, at the x-rays, anything. But _let him rest_. Leave us alone until then."

 

####

 

He watched Sherlock removing the poor, disoriented neurologist from his room and tried not to laugh.

The new, gentle and yet insistent Sherlock surprised him.

Everything surprised him.

Being alive was one of the most unexpected things.

Being alive, safe in England and with Sherlock guarding his every breath...

The surprise of his life.

He had some very patchy memories of the last days - hell, half of what he did in Brazil was kind of foggy.

But there was one shining point that made him focus.

Sherlock. Sherlock had come for him, had walked him out of that warehouse where he had hidden - and became an accidental prisoner of his own organisation and his infirmity. Sherlock had found some way to fly them back home. Sherlock...

His free hand was again held by the long, elegant fingers of his whatever-they-were-now. Co-agents, probably. But coworkers didn't touch each other in that way, usually. Neither did flatmates... But on the other hand, they had already done so much that no other flatmates in the world ever did, so why not that, too.

He dearly hoped Sherlock would not retreat suddenly. That would have been disastrous.

There was something...

His head hurt.

But something specific.

A sound, a word, a question.

He squeezed Sherlock's hand again, just to send the signal that he was there.

And he received one in return.

Sherlock had come for him and they were back home.

It was incredible.

Like something from a dream.

Only there was that thing that he was missing, that thing that was so important.

Like a dream within a dream.

He tried counting the hours, but numbers kept escaping him. It had been evening - ten-ish? - when they got to the airport. Took off at... midnight? He was pretty sure it took twelve hours to fly from Brazil to England, so...

He blinked. Midnight. How long did it take to fly from Brazil to England? Twelve hours?

So, it was noon in Brazil when they landed in Surrey.

No, not Surrey. London. Sherlock said something about City Airport...

So it was noon in Brazil...

He sighed.

Noon in Brazil meant...

Meant...

Twelve hours of flight...

"What time is it...?" he whispered finally.

"Nine in the morning," Sherlock answered absently, his finger tracing the rows of pink lines on John's wrist.

He tried some more addition and subtraction and came up with a completely jumbled set of numbers.

"How...?"

"We left Rio around 11 PM, the flight took, well, should have taken ten hours, but with the change of course and the issues at City, it was eleven. So, midnight. They had you in surgery for..." he hesitated. "And then they brought you here. And the poor neurologist was to come at eight and he was punctual. He was here for a while and so..." Sherlock shrugged. "Nine."

"Oh..." John looked away and tried to ask the next question without looking like an idiot.

"And it's twenty-second of May."

"How did you...!?"

Sherlock smiled, a tiny, tiniest smile. Happy smile. _Real_ Sherlock smile.

"I can still read you, John," he assured, fingers never leaving the ragged scars on the thin skin of John's wrist, massaging it slowly, nearly absently. "You had a look around. Then you focused, even moving your lips a few times - that's a common reflex, helps people count - you lost the train of calculations a few times - then you sighed - gave up - and asked me. You still tried to work something, even when I told you how long it took us to get here. So, you are worried about the date. What with your long stay away and the flight and the surgery - not to mention minor memory loss due to your condition on the flight - is quite understandable and..."

John caught the long, nervous fingers dancing across his forearm in his and squeezed.

"Quite brilliant," he managed, choking. "God, how I missed this. The hallucinated you was fine - more than fine - but nothing is as good as the real article."

"Well, obviously," Sherlock remarked gruffly. "The hallucinated me could only be as smart as the person who hallucinates him, while _I_ am, no doubt, superior to any third-rate imitations."

He felt a bubble of happiness rising in his belly and smiled at the consulting posh git.

"You absolutely are," he whispered, an old smile stretching his lips in a long-forgotten grin. "That you are."

 

####

 

Sherlock sat by John's bed as the patient alternatively dozed and woke up in a morphine-clouded peace.

John didn't remember. John didn't allude to it in any way, John had trouble even accounting for all the events since their escape from the warehouse - if not long before it. John definitely didn't...

And even if he _did_ remember, John had thought he had been speaking to a hallucination. Which seemed to be the most probable explanation for the fact that he wasn't mentioning it.

Primo, John _knew_ he had been hallucinating - he was conscious of the fact when it happened in Bolivia, he said it himself. Therefore, a hallucination of Sherlock was something he treated as... as an expected phenomenon. A known value.

Secundo, John at some point started conversing with his visions. Not in Bolivia, as he admitted - he had been too scared of his captors. But it was something he did habitually. His demeanour changed when he spoke to what he assumed was a mirage Sherlock. He...

Sherlock's logical and carefully laid-out thoughts tripped, hiccoughed and stuttered to a halt.

John had, out loud, called his mirage Sherlock "love". It was an endearment that had never passed John's lips in Sherlock's presence before. The word itself, yes. Describing things, relating to other people's sentiments, but never as... as something _directed_ at another person. Never a vocative expression.

And yet, he addressed his mirage Sherlock in that fashion.

Tertio... Was there a third point? There had to be a third point in there, omne trinum perfectum and all that rot. His brain worked well on threes.

Ah. Tertio, John had declared that real Sherlock was better than hallucinated Sherlock. It could admittedly be due to the fact that real Sherlock could get John out of warehouses and away from foreign countries, but Sherlock couldn't shake the small voice telling him that John, in fact...

...John was infallibly kind and patient towards him (which sometimes took the form of a rather tough kind of care), even when he was sure he was only a hallucination, correct? So one could safely assume that, while he had not directly _rejected_ the hallucination's proposal and was delicate in turning the mirage Sherlock down, he was... He was the kind of man who would flirt with Lana Petersen, but not with real or imagined Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock looked down, at the sleeping soldier. His soldier. His doctor.

And never anything more.

Because it was obvious that while John would always be his friend, even in his imagination he couldn't accept Sherlock as anything else. He turned down what he assumed was an imagined proposal - kindly! Delicately! Lovingly! But turned it down... The little lie about it being the wrong Sherlock that John had used didn't count, because was it a sin to lie to a hallucination?

And he declared he preferred real Sherlock to imagined one all the same, and what was the most important difference between the two? John didn't know that real Sherlock has in fact proposed to him. He ascribed that sentiment to the imagined Sherlock. Therefore...

He squeezed John's fingers slightly.

If John preferred real Sherlock to the hallucinated one, so it would be. He knew what to avoid now.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hospital and investigation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not in medical profession, so please take the pneumothorax and pneumonia details with a grain of salt.

Bringing the investigation to his hospital room must have been a challenge, but as John watched, Sherlock did just that. Very soon he had two laptops running, a small stack of very tightly organised boxes stacked in the corner and he took over one section of the wall, taping pieces of paper to it.  
Despite certain protests on the side of the personnel, he got John to have a look at various pieces of the evidence, from photos, to documents they collected, to CCTV.  
Oh, the CCTV.  
John hadn't known it would hurt so much.  
All the IVs and sensors he was connected to meant that he couldn't sit comfortably, even in the limited time his current shitty endurance would have allowed him to stay up, but on their eighth day in the hospital Anthea invaded his room and left a plethora of helpful implements, including an upright laptop table that he could use to position one of the computers at a better angle for viewing and typing. They tested it immediately, picking some documents for him to peruse and the setup was nearly perfect, despite the current limitations of John's fine motor skills.  
So a day after, when he woke up to an empty room and one laptop within his reach, he grabbed it and started working on something that would mostly require hitting the Space key effectively - the footage.  
And he paid for his diligence dearly.  
The videos he had started with were the recordings of his own grave.  
The cameras at the cemetery had been equipped with a motion sensor, so they didn't record much on the quietest days, when even random, wind-blown objects didn't trigger a response. The particular one overlooking a slab of stone with his name on it did, however, record Sherlock. Haggard, ill-looking Sherlock who, for the first few appearances - John checked the date, bare weeks after his 'death' - just sat there and watched. Or sat there and held his head in his hands, rocking helplessly to and fro. Or, on one particular occasion, sat with his arms around his knees, shivering so hard John could see it even on the CCTV recording.  
And then there were flowers. A lot of flowers.  
Sherlock started to bring him the flowers.  
John reclined on his bed, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes, his mouth clamped shut on the sobs that threatened to escape, trying to get a grip, to...  
"Captain Watson?" suddenly, there was a nurse in the room with him. "I need you to calm down. Your heart rate is up through the roof."  
"I, ah," he nodded slowly, still on the verge of breaking down. "I can't. I can't...!"  
"Should I call someone..."  
"No need, thank you," Sherlock slid into his chair on John's other side with ease and caught one of his hands, pulling him closer in, surrounding him in soothing warmth. "I'm sorry, John. Mycroft ordered me to shower and change. I thought you were sleeping. Now, breathe with me. Slowly."  
"Ah-I was," he confirmed, taking large gulps of air and forcing himself to calm down, slowly synchronising his breathing with Sherlock's. "But I woke up and... and I just thought I could find something on the recordings, and..."   
He felt Sherlock turning the laptop and checking the screen.  
"John, I... I am most terribly sorry..."  
He drew a slow, deliberate, shuddering breath.  
"It is me who should be apologising, Sherlock," he said finally. "I never expected... I thought..." he slumped back, turning away from his friend. "I'm not sure I had thought it through properly. I had this grand plan, to... to somehow get that man to leave you alone. To show him that a retired soldier can still have a use... I..."  
He felt the warmth of Sherlock's hand before the touch connected. The sob he had been holding in escaped with a wet sound. It hurt how good it felt to have someone - Sherlock! - touching him with a specific intent to comfort him. Not to take his temperature, not to wake him up, not to... But in order for John to feel touch and presence of another and to feel better because of this.  
Long fingers massaged his shoulder lightly and he felt himself relaxing, if only minutely, under Sherlock's expert touch.  
"I--Ah..." he gasped, trying to force his nervous reaction to subside.  
"Come on, on your back, soldier," Sherlock pulled him to lie down on the pillows. "I will lower the lights, it's annoying how bright they keep it here."  
"Thank you," John watched as his friend - partner? - manipulated the lights panel, bringing it to comfortable levels. "It felt like it was stabbing me in the back of my eyeballs..."  
"And we wouldn't want that. Eye stabbing is nasty, messy and has high mortality rate," Sherlock quipped and sat next to him, pushing the laptop to the foot of the bed. "Leave this for later. Now, you need rest."  
"But..."  
Sherlock squeezed his hand and straightened the duvet over his legs, accidentally hitting the laptop with a corner. He tried to reach for it, but seemed unable to let go of John's hand and that forced him to stretch quite a lot, even for him. Halfway through the motion of settling it on the bedside table, Sherlock froze.  
"John," his voice broke, just a bit. "Look."  
John turned his head to glance at the screen and sat up in shock. There was someone else at the grave.  
"He took my flowers," Sherlock explained, rewinding the recording. "He waited about... half an hour. And then he came and took the flowers, look."  
Indeed, there was a man, bowing in front of his headstone, picking up the small nosegay left by Sherlock and leaving something dark behind.  
"It was so quickly after I left..." the detective breathed. "How come we never checked this recording before? Why...?"  
"We were more concerned with the cars that had been following you," Mycroft Holmes answered from the door. "The cars have been found, by the way. All lined up in an abandoned factory outside... Sheffield. And burnt."  
"M," John nodded at him cautiously. "What cars?"  
"Nothing important," Sherlock said quickly. "If they are burnt, well, no evidence, so no matter."  
"Cars were following Sherlock on his way from your grave to town, agent Watson," Mycroft continued, ignoring his brother's displeased glare. "In an unusual fashion. He reported them to me after..." he lifted an eyebrow at Sherlock.  
"The third time. Three is a pattern. Also, at first I thought they were your cars, but when one of them turned out to be a red Audi Quattro, I had to abandon that particular line of thought."  
John smiled weakly.  
"Was there a Ford Cortina in that set, too?"  
The brothers looked at each other suspiciously.  
"Y-es," Mycroft enunciated slowly. "A red one, too."  
"Mhm. So either you were being followed by a ghost of a nostalgic copper from Manchester or your stalker likes crime dramas. Back to the topic - the cars were abandoned in Sheffield, can we estimate when?"  
The same suspicious look again.  
John groaned internally and slumped down on the bed a bit, tired by the way he couldn't really keep his emotions in check. He would happily blame it on painkillers, but deep inside he knew it was just him and his fucked up psyche and all that feeling of being completely absolutely dependent on others.  
"I would really, really like to do something sensible and useful. So, when were the cars abandoned?"  
"The preliminary analysis didn't provide conclusive results..."  
He sighed. Audibly.  
"Each one at a different time. But based on what Sherlock told me, we can guess that each of them was burnt after it was used to follow him."  
"Were the cars identified? Where did they come from? Stolen? Bought second-hand for cash?"  
"The damage..."  
John didn't even try to stop a snort.  
"Stolen, various places, not connected by time, area, neighbourhood class or owner affiliation. Nothing that links the cars, either."  
"Basically, crimes of opportunity," Sherlock combed back his hair with both hands. "Nothing there to lead us, unless we find specific footage from these places."  
"Back to the cemetery then," John pointed to the screen. "This man, what did he leave?"  
"John..."  
"Sherlock, what did he leave on my grave?"  
"It's better..."  
"Sirs, I will ask you two to remove yourselves if you keep disturbing the patient!"  
"No! I need to know! Sherlock!"  
His friend shuddered.  
"A wreath of black roses."  
John fell back on his pillow.  
"Hatred," the nurse remarked from the doorway. "A few of the nurses started checking what kind of flowers people receive - not only because of allergies. We get all kinds here. People trying to smuggle in a political statement, people trying to just mess with someone's mind... We had a girl who was receiving black rose bouquets from her ex-boyfriend. Ugly stuff."  
"Just sending flowers is not that dangerous..." John trailed off as the nurse shook her head slowly.  
"The ex had sent her here. Instead of just breaking up, he tried to break her spine. So, pretty dangerous."  
"Wonder how he knew about the black flowers. Most people would have just sent hate mail with letters pasted from a newspaper," John sighed and sank into his pillows.  
"Oh, that man did all of that. Cut newspapers to make creepy notes, sent freaky flowers and even took a video she had made and edited it to look as if she was going to commit a suicide."  
John learnt two new things about the Holmes brothers that day. One was that Mycroft might have left his fieldwork days in distant past, but he still had reflexes many a younger man would envy. Also, Sherlock looked very dramatic when he fainted.

#

"You didn't record this," Sherlock stated flatly.  
John had asked them to stop the video after a minute and a half of watching himself say all the very, very terrible things he had actually said. He just never said them like that.  
He was now curled up on his side on the bed, exhausted by a bout of nausea and prolonged sitting up. The most overwhelming feeling was dread. Deep-seated, soul-sucking dread. Guilt was a close second, ex-aequo with hopelessness.  
John shook his head in denial and shivered, pressing his eyes shut, tuning out everything around him.  
"...on. Doctor Watson, you have to... static ...ic attack. Doctor Watson? static ...thing."  
A hand on his neck. Another on his shoulder. A warm body insinuating itself onto the bed with him. Sherlock's fingers mapping his shaved head.  
"Breathe with me, John."  
In, hold, out. In, hold, out.  
Soft cotton under his cheek. Long fingers of a violinist pressing on the tense muscles of his neck. Chest under his body expanding slowly and contracting.  
"Come on, John, calm down. In and out. Slowly."  
He held on to that.  
He held on to the hands that anchored him in that place.  
"In and out."  
Sherlock had just fainted, nurses had to revive him. Sherlock had...  
John gasped with pain, but the hands were there, holding him, stabilising him.  
Sherlock had gone through all that suffering, even worse than what John had suspected he would. Sherlock had grieved and visited his grave and... And he was still there. He held on to that - and to Sherlock - with both hands, literally and metaphorically.  
"He recorded our conversation," John choked out. "We met at some shitty diner. I said things... Things to convince him it would work. Things that explained why I wanted out - I made him think... I don't know. Sherlock, I don't know. I wanted to be useful, finally. I could never - nothing I did helped you - I wanted to do at least that for you. He promised - I jump, he never approaches you again. He said he would just watch. The better show..."  
"You trusted him?" Sherlock shook with something resembling laughter. Of a bitter variety.  
"No... Somehow, a bit. I don't know, Sherlock, I don't know. I was so worried, I didn't know what to do. I was so...so tired..."  
"And you supported him," Sherlock wasn't letting go of John, but he obviously turned to his brother. "You helped him to set it up! You told me... Oh, for..."  
"I have to admit we were... taken by surprise. I supported doctor Watson's - agent Watson's - initial judgement of the situation and I..."  
"Out," Sherlock demanded suddenly. "You used him. You used his distraction, his..."  
"Mycroft helped," John protested softly. "I would have never made it work..."  
A gulp of air.  
"Shhh. Breathe, breathe..."  
John closed his eyes and sank into that embrace, a little spark of guilt in his soul reminding him to not read too much into it. Sherlock was just being immensely practical - he was the knowledge and the skills needed to keep John tethered. He had never been very big on personal space, so his presence around John was not something... unexpected. But it wasn't expected as such, either. It was new, very new. It wasn't something that they used to do, was it?  
Ah. Not before the plane.  
John frowned.  
Something about the plane.  
Sherlock's hands all around him, holding him together.  
John's skin, so hot he could barely stand the touch of the sleeping bag belted over his legs and lower torso, but Sherlock's hands had felt so good on it, cool and caressing.  
He pushed the thought down. Not good to wake up unnecessary hopes. He would be good. He would be all fine. Better let this idea sleep. They weren't anything.  
They were best friends, that was all there was to it. They cared for each other. If Sherlock was feverish, John would have been there for him, too. Friends did that, didn't they? If you live with someone, you want to keep them healthy and happy, so you would take care of them. That was only reasonable.  
Not that he had a lot of experience in having normal, everyday friends that he could compare with. In fact, sometimes it felt as if none of them actually had any other friends. Close acquaintances - yes, family - out of necessity, Mrs Hudson... Maybe friends did actually do that. How would John know? His experience was... not that standard, after all. Rugby buddies were in much more contact, physically, than any other boys at school and army forced one into a kind of suspended privacy - nobody was ever alone. As a medical unit, they were even worse in that area. All in all, he had no idea what was normal or not.  
But then, when did they ever care for normal?  
He sighed and focused on the deep warmth that Sherlock's body was providing.  
"You are not useless," Sherlock whispered as John felt his focus slip away and as sleep overtook his exhausted body and mind. "You were never useless."

#

"We will keep the antibiotics on, but that's just to make sure we've run the full course," the pulmonologist declared. "Your lungs sound fine, the pneumothorax has cleared perfectly. You will be weakened, of course, for some time more, but at this point I can hand you over to our friends that will take care of your neural damage. Just make sure to follow the care instructions..."  
"May I?" Sherlock reached out for the printout. "Ah-hm. Rest, see? You are supposed to be resting. No talking loudly, very well, now I have it on doctor's authority that you are not supposed to shout at me. Cough suppressant..."  
"It is included in the IV," the doctor provided helpfully.  
"Ah. Avoid smoking. Well, that is..." he coughed. "Well, that is not a problem."  
John turned his head to look at Sherlock closely.  
"Oh."  
"Well, yes. Spend enough time having to clock out and in at our office and even the Marlboro man would have stopped smoking," Sherlock shrugged, seemingly indifferently, but there was a trace of pride in his voice.  
"And then there are the breathing exercises, which will be provided to you by the nurse later today. Any questions?"  
"What is the probability of the pneumothorax happening again?" Sherlock asked suddenly. "What would be the way to manage the danger here?"  
"Ah, well..." the man sat down. "There is always a risk of a recurrence in two years following, but as you say doctor Watson doesn't smoke, if I understand correctly, and neither do you, this is one point that you have working for you. No diving for you, doctor Watson, I'm afraid, and you should not attempt any air travel in the coming days, but I suppose you weren't planning to undertake any. Am I correct?"  
John nodded slowly, eyeing Sherlock with slight suspicion.  
"So, more intensive exercise, running, or other types of activity? Anything John should avoid?"  
"All fine. I mean, apart from diving or otherwise vastly affecting the air pressure, any activity is encouraged. That will of course depend on how you feel in general, but as it pertains to pneumothorax itself, you are free to do any kind of exercise you wish."

#

"So, every time you visited the... the cemetery, he was waiting for you in some car near the exit, followed you until you mixed with some crowd, came back and stole the flowers? And put some black crap in their place?"  
"Black roses wreath, or a bouquet of headless flowers. I can't say I saw them every time, but I never saw mine when I came back."  
Molly was sitting on John's other side, watching the recording with wide eyes.  
"I know he was weird," she swallowed with unease. "But this... this is messed up."  
"More messed up than blowing up people in the middle of London to get Sherlock to solve his puzzles?"  
She shivered and turned away from the screen.  
"You are positive it is him?"  
"Quite. Mycroft made contact with some CCTV magician in the States and he put together an algorithm that tracks footage across cameras, providing they are in the correct locations. We managed to get his face from an ATM camera across the street from the cemetery. It's Moriarty."  
"It's..." she chewed on the word. "It's unhealthy. I mean, he was watching you as you visited John's grave and then...? Followed you in a car?"  
"And then came back to the grave, stole the flowers and replaced them with his own. Yes. How many times will we rehash this?"  
"Until we know what we missed," John patted his hand. "Like, why nobody ever told you they had seen them? Did he bribe them all? You can't bribe everyone in the cemetery services, can you?"  
He traced the long fingers under his own with his thumb, small circles massaging some calm into Sherlock's tense muscles. He saw his friend heave a deep breath and shake his head.  
"Not impossible, but definitely something of a challenge. With Moriarty's superiority complex I can't see him socialising with the janitors and groundskeepers. But there was something, an idea I had one day... Yes, that is how I worked out the embassy connection. I guessed that the person messing with the flowers had to be cemetery employee, but then I never followed it up," Sherlock jumped up and started striding around in agitation. "Obvious, in hindsight. Who hides in plain sight on a cemetery? A gravedigger, a guard, a gardener, a cleaner..."  
"An undertaker," John mused. "A, whaddyacalhim, a sexton? Some other kind of church official?"  
Sherlock froze in front of the window.  
"Find the frame where he exits through the gate. Zoom in on his collar."

#

The neurologists started their work as soon as the pneumonia was officially gone - all the time overseen by Lieutenant - well, no - doctor Petersen. Their first predictions were not particularly optimistic, but once Lana helped them to map the old and new damage and John had explained the level of dexterity he had regained after his shoulder injury, they revised their estimations.  
It wasn't enough to promise him he would ever be able to shoot again, however.  
But they could promise to lessen the tremors and eliminate the pain.  
Being able to shoot would be a great improvement. Writing would be fantastic. But just getting it down to "no pain" would be good, too, he decided. No pain would be his first target.  
Surgeries were carefully planned and physical therapy scheduled. Consults with more specialists were conducted and included in the primary diagnosis.  
"You will be able to walk without the cane, that much I can promise you," Lana sighed and shook her head. "Not much can be done for your hands, I'm afraid, but if we are persistent with the exercises, you will get your left hand back to, maybe, seventy percent of basic mobility and control. I know it will not be the same, but once you build some muscle back and work on it, you will be able to write, not to mention covering your everyday needs," she nodded towards the 'lunch' tray.  
Yeah, lunch. John smirked as Sherlock scrunched his nose in distaste.  
John was being given IV nutrients, but the amounts were reduced as he started to sit up for longer times - now mostly pain management and antibiotics went there - but he had to remain on a more or less fluid diet due to the shakiness of both of his hands and his unwillingness to be fed by someone else. Eating through a straw or - part of his exercises, as ordered by Lana Petersen - with a plastic spoon - was hard, slow and annoying, but it was way better than a nasal tube. There was nothing that motivated him better to exercise his shaky hands than the looming vision of a piece of plastic being stuck down his nose.  
Or, even worse, into his stomach directly.  
"OK," he inhaled and held, held, held the air. "Walking. Left hand. That's a start. Can I assume you will make a terrifyingly exhausting PT schedule for me, Lieutenant?"  
"Yes, sir," she winked at him. "Apart from the surgeries and the direct recovery afterwards, you will be getting massages - these muscles have to be loosened up! - and Mr Holmes may attend a course that will instruct him how to continue these at home on ad-hoc basis, if he so wishes; then there will be exercises, exercises and exercises. Small muscles, big muscles, stretching and precision. Exact times and repetitions will all be detailed by yours truly. And, as soon as the incisions are healed, swimming. You will need a lot of activity that will engage you in a symmetrical fashion and swimming and cycling would be my preference here."  
"Ah, cycling?" he blinked and looked down at his legs, which were now an object of some detailed plans going on at the neurosurgery department, but were showing much less muscle than he ever remembered having - even as a kid, he used to be rather stocky... Riding a bike with these matchsticks seemed like an impossible idea.  
"I wouldn't say you will ever be able to ride competitively, but as a means of therapy it will be one of the most relaxing methods available. Same with swimming. Whether you just splash around or swim laps - all fine. As long as you are in a reduced strain situation and moving a lot."  
"I will be most interested in attending the massage course," came Sherlock's sudden interjection. He sounded neutral - almost. There was something...  
Lana smiled kindly and nodded.  
"It is always good to have a partner involved in these things," she made a note on her pad and cracked her fingers. "Now, let me see your ankles, young man. I have to check how your joints are doing."  
"'Young man'?" John spluttered. "Well, I may be younger, but I still outrank you, Lieutenant!"  
"Not in this hospital," she countered sweetly. "Now, tell me if it hurts when I do that."

#

"Not a priest. But the good old method of showing his photo around gave a result," Mycroft pulled out a single printed sheet. "He has been recognised as an employee of one of the numerous funeral companies in London. He actually claimed to have a diploma in funeral directing, although the National Association of Funeral Directors doesn't seem to have his name on the list."  
"If they had 'Moriarty' in their files, would they have told anyone?"  
"Actually, for the purposes of that employment, and its whole backstory, Moriarty had created a persona of 'Richard Brook'. Somewhat foppish, soft-spoken individual. And, they said, very particular about his duties. Attentive to the mourners, coming around to 'his' graves many times to ensure they were being maintained properly..."  
"So him hanging around the cemetery at varied times would not have been seen as suspicious," summarised John. "They expected him to be there at all hours - but that meant he had built that persona ahead of time, right? Spent days on adding background and history - attending all these funerals, taking care of poor old ladies and so on. So..." he shrugged. "How long before my funeral had he been active?"  
"At least three, maybe even four months. The company he officially represented had hired him half a year previous, but they had internal trainings about procedures and client handling first, which he attended. He only started working with customers after two months of preparation."  
"He seriously invested himself in this whole thing," John's was growing tired, but there was an idea rattling around his brain and he needed to voice it. "I... how hard it is to set something like that up? How long would he need to..." he yawned. "...to make a new one, equally well-based? Would he... I mean, would he... Recycle?" he tried to focus, but sometimes, being forced to talk with the amount of painkillers he still had in his system was like walking through jelly.  
Sherlock's hand eased him lower on the pillow.  
"You think he might have used the same background for another identity?"  
"Mhm..."  
"He was a bit lazy, sometimes..."   
The last thing he heard was Mycroft and Sherlock discussing the probability of Moriarty being quite indolent enough to recycle the name of his funeral director persona.

#

"Not lazy enough. Brazen enough," Mycroft enunciated with distaste. "He created twenty-eight Richard Brooks. Careful work, very careful. Documents for different professions, certificates, courses, schools and everything. He has options. He could be a funeral director, as we saw, or a moderately successful radio actor, or a car mechanic or..." he shrugged, dropping the handful of files at the foot of John's bed. "All around the country."  
"But is he brazen enough to just stay in London? I wouldn't," John pointed out. "He must have known that once you find out he has all these other identities, London would no longer be safe for him."  
"That much we could ascertain," the older Holmes confirmed with a grimace. "That leaves me with the other twenty-three and the possibility he used one of London-based ones for something outside the city. We are following them up, but unfortunately it seems like he activated at least half of them and we aren't sure which one is the correct, 'lived' copy."  
"Amateurs," Sherlock mumbled into his hand.  
"Not good, Sherlock," John patted his elbow, the only part he could reach. "What kind of identities did he use?" he turned tiredly towards Mycroft. "We have to think, what kind of a job can an evil genius assume long term? Funeral director sounds like him, but he wouldn't repeat that... If I was a betting man, I'd put my money on a high school teacher, they are pure evil."  
"No school teachers..." Mycroft pulled out two folders. "But one primary school janitor and one XIX century literature lecturer."  
"Start with the janitor," John sighed and sank into his pillow. "Janitors at my school were like these bloody wizards, they always knew when someone dropped a piece of paper at the end of a dark corridor."

####


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Night confessions, morning discoveries and important decisions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It kind of exploded, from a short few sentences that I had yesterday morning to 6k words. I've read and re-read it a few times, and it kept GROWING. Unusually, the boys beheaved and it was mostly Mycroft who tried to hijack the chapter.  
> Please let me know if you see anything unclear, broken sentences, statements that make no sense or some other weaknesses in it. I hope I managed to get rid of most of these, but can't promise it's all perfect.

The room was dark and quiet, the sounds of hospital remote and John's breathing heavy in his own ears.

"I--" his voice failed and he had to cough. "I wasn't supposed to get that far."

Sherlock stirred in his cot, raising his head sleepily.

"John?"

"Just... let me say this. Once. I wasn't supposed to survive this. It was too big. Too much. I... When I started... No, before. Before, I mostly wanted to show Moriarty that this old soldier can still fight. Then I thought that maybe I could be of use, somehow, in a bigger picture. I went to Mycroft with a request to... to give me, something. Anything.'

"Why?"

Sherlock sounded... injured. Wounded. Cut.

"Because you were next. Because I knew that if I didn't make it interesting for that fucker, he would come after you. And you wouldn't be able to withstand the allure of the puzzle."

"John..."

"Let me finish. Please. I'm pleasantly high on painkillers and this may be the only chance I get, before I... Before I completely lose my courage."

He paused, listening.

Nothing but slow breathing.

"It was easy, at the beginning. The decision itself was rather ridiculously obvious. Manipulating the consulting creep... Not so easy, but we managed to keep him away by... a cunning set of hints. Don't ask, I still can't think about it without cringing. Once I was whisked away, Mycroft pushed me through some basic training - and then they found out that I'd been considered by MI5 previously. Although the office decided they had no use for me, files remained, including the-- the things I did during my deployments. We were--" he had to stop again, catch some air. "--doesn't matter. Highly specialised unit. Yes, I was part of RAMC. And most definitely a medic. I just had some-- other duties, too."

Sherlock's breathing deepened and the springs of his cot squeaked as he sat up.

"I did things, Sherlock. I did things I'm not proud of and things that, as a doctor, I probably should not have done. I was ordered to do them, yes, and they have saved uncounted lives. But I'm still not reconciled with them. And then, when I was for once doing something I was supposed to, saving lives and applying my hard-gained skills, I was shot and sent back home, broken. And just like this, years of service unacknowledged, because they are bloody _secret_. And will remain so for some time yet. And the shrink they assigned me to was not helping. She didn't understand the first thing about me."

"Mycroft said she couldn't deal very well with your PTSD," Sherlock murmured.

"She probably did OK with others, with more standard cases. Afraid of noises? Scared by sudden movement? Unable to sleep? Anger management issues? Unable to sleep in one bed with another person? These she could do, but she didn't understand the stress of uselessness."

The silence stretched and Sherlock moved slightly.

"She didn't understand that she was trying to do the wrong thing. Instead of trying to mold me into something that would fit into society, she should have helped me find a place where I could have fit as I was. Because... basically, what she was saying was 'what you know and can do is now useless, you have to change and adjust and discard your old self to be good enough to live with others'. At least, this is what my mind heard. It... didn't do wonders to my stability."

John rubbed along the line of stitches on his left hand. Second surgery. Another in three days.

"She was supposed to be making me better. Calmer. Make me feel safer. All she managed to do was to convince me I will never manage to fit in with normal people. I was too different, I had done too many things normal people would have seen as..." he felt a sob coming. "She didn't have my full record. How could she have helped me if she didn't know what I'd done?"

"It must have been hard," Sherlock's voice was barely a whisper.

"And then when I spoke to Mycroft, he suggested, off-hand, maybe switching to another therapist, because mine sounds like a hack. And I understood, in one bright moment, that it wasn't me that was wrong - well, I was, I was still broken and depressed and barely functioning - but that was because the objective that she set for me was wrong. I wasn't supposed to change myself and become a--a bloke with a girlfriend, little house in the suburbs and a nine-to-five job below my abilities. I was supposed to make use of my skills. I could do stuff that not many other people could."

"Martial arts? Languages...?" Sherlock's voice was now much closer.

"Well, people skills, mostly. That, shooting and blending into background in thirty different ways. Of course, there was a lot that I've had to learn in the Army that was of use - from marksmanship, which was obvious, to obtaining language fluency in new places... not that obvious. So I told Mycroft what I can do - what I _could_ do - and finally, he agreed. You can ask him for details of how he arranged the... The thing on the roof. I was out of the country in three weeks, on a plane to France, equipped with a set of false papers and a bunch of reports on potential cases of Moriarty's involvement with local crime syndicates."

He nearly jumped out of his skin when a large, dry, warm hand encased his.

"Stop picking on the stitches," Sherlock sighed. "John, you don't need to tell me everything. Or anything at all. I probably guessed most of it by now. I must admit, I never checked the therapist you were seeing, but she seemed mostly harmless... I'm sorry for that."

"For once you respected my privacy," John squeezed his friend's hand. "Well, I will need a new one - Mycroft offered the MI6 resources, of course. As an employee, I'm entitled to..."

_Oh._

"John? John, what happened?" six feet of consulting detective was climbing on his bed, one hand seeking his pulse, another hugging him protectively. "John?"

"I..." he shook his head. "That's the longest I've been working in one place. I just noticed. I've almost reached the two year mark. I mean, most of it I've spent way outside any supervision, but I'm not the only one to do that in this agency. It just surprised me. My first employment after the Army that wasn't severed due to my extreme unreliability. Two years, fancy that."

Sherlock's tight hold on him loosened.

"Why are you so surprised? Because you were..." the soft baritone broke slightly. "You were not supposed to survive this? Why would you..."

"Because that's realistic. I was a single agent, even if well-provided for, with a network of support across the embassies and consulates and an occasional trade attache. A single person. Well, with some nice contacts, too. A lot of people I met in my Army days are now in law enforcement all around the world..."

"You have friends everywhere..."

He shook his head and let it fall back just so, making sure he was now breathing in pure Sherlock - his body wash, a trace of something pine-y, clean skin and toothpaste.

"No. I have contacts. People I could ask for help to get me somewhere or to provide me with some resources. There was nobody I could talk to, nobody I could really fully depend on."

"But..." the chest just millimetres from him expanded in a whoosh. "But you couldn't depend on me either. I was always leaving you behind and..."

John found himself covering the plush lips with a finger.

"Sh," he just said. "No more."

"But, John..." the lips moved against his finger, sending little shivers down his spine.

_Oh, God, I wish I could just kiss you and make you shut up. Give that smart mouth something else to work on. Wouldn't want you to push me off this bed though._

"Sherlock, you are my best friend. Whatever happened, you are the one. I have some buddies - blokes I've served with, some people from the uni. Mike was a reasonably good approximation of a... a good companion. We didn't socialise a lot at Bart's, but who did? We were mostly studying or sleeping, so the fact that he remembered me and I remembered him is already significant, but we... we were never close. Never..."

He sighed and they breathed in the darkness for a moment, quietly. John could feel the warmth radiating from Sherlock's reclining form and wished he could curl up into it, to soak it in, to...

His thoughts stuttered to a halt when Sherlock's long arm gathered him closer.

"What happened out there?" the detective asked finally. "Apart from the obvious and what you included in the reports... I know that things happened that you never wrote us about. And, well, since Bolivia..."

The darkness hid the way his face tensed, or at least he hoped it did.

"I killed people, Sherlock. Sometimes with my own hands - or my gun - but a lot of times remotely. I've been shot at - from a distance and close up. Got stabbed. Starved. Ate snow. Hid in rat-infested bunkers. Drove a snowmobile through Sweden. Blew up a hotel. Hijacked a train in Siberia. Um. Posed as a taxi driver in India. Been stabbed by a rickshaw driver in India. Made friends with Chinese mafia - the real thing. Been actually shot. Almost drowned, three times. And I'm not even going to mention any details of my month-long stay in Australia. That continent is designed to do a man in just by existing. Got poisoning, several times, only two of which were food. Drunk with Russian cops. God, these guys can drink. Russian vodka should be classified as a lethal weapon. But they taught me to play balalaika, so..."

"You've spent a lot of time with them, didn't you?"

John shrugged.

"It was a tough case and Saint Petersburg is bloody cold in winter. Turned out local drug lord kept the gang's storage under the ice in a pond, so drug dogs couldn't find it. There was that one... he would be a constable, I suppose. Alex. Sasha. He kept talking to me, making sure I was fine. Gave him some English lessons, he taught me local Russian dialect, just a bit. Long, cold stakeouts. He told me once that I would be going home soon, when I finish."

"Ah. Sasha... How do you get 'Sasha' out of 'Alex'?"

"Alexander and... They make it Sasha, somehow. Don't ask, it's a Russian thing."

They stayed like this, quietly, in the darkness, Sherlock stretched alongside John on his narrow bed.

"And... when you though you'd die, you thought you'd... do what? What did you think would happen?"

John squirmed.

"I thought... That one day, one of these bullets would find me. Or someone would get that knife deep enough. Or... Or anything. I was living day to day sometimes, surviving and keeping upright until the next point on the map, and the next, and the next. I knew that the more I'd get done, the less trouble it would be for Mycroft to unravel the rest and to ensure your..."

"My safety," Sherlock breathed.

"Your survival."

John closed his eyes and slowly, slowly, tipped his head forward, his forehead connecting with Sherlock's shoulder.

"Sometimes I dreamt about coming back home," he whispered. "I thought I could maybe just slip back in, make tea and sit in my chair and nobody would have been the wiser. That nobody would have noticed me gone, so they wouldn't see me coming back... Or that I could..." he ducked his head, breathing in their mixed air. "That I would never be able to come back. That I would have to stay somewhere - maybe in Asia, or even in Australia - and make sure the organisation there wouldn't reincarnate into something that would endanger..."

"The security of the Crown," Sherlock laughed silently.

"I must admit that the security of the Crown in general was not my primary aim. I'm too small a man to care about Crown, I just needed one particular citizen of that country to stay alive."

He heard Sherlock's breath catch and carefully rewound, checking his own words.

_Well... Could have been a little more subtle, I suppose._

"Thank you," Sherlock breathed.

"I thought about you all the time," John confessed absently, sleepily. "I thought about... you sitting there... in front of the fire... I just hoped..." he yawned "...wait long enough... tell you..."

"Tell me what, John?" Sherlock's soft voice didn't manage to rouse him however, not enough to speak. He just smiled and let his head tip closer to Sherlock's warmth. The last thing he felt were long fingers slowly gliding through the short fuzz of regrowing hair.

 

####

 

Ever since the first neurosurgery, John had been waking up and falling asleep at unpredictable moments. The middle of the night confession was not their first conversation at an unusual time, but this one had hit Sherlock rather hard, once he replayed it in the security of his own cot and his Mind Palace.

John had been expecting to die on that mission.

John had been ready to die on that mission.

In particular, he had been ready to die for Sherlock's sake.

In particular, he had been ready to die in order for Mycroft to be able to assure Sherlock's continued existence.

Stupid, stupid soldier.

His stupid soldier.

He had thought about coming back home and not being noticed because his _absence_ would not have been missed.

_How!?_

The dawn painted some pastel colours on the contents of the tiny room, washing slowly first over the wall opposite the window, then the off-white dresser under it, then the sliver of floor, John's legs...

John's legs.

Sherlock had seen them, up and close, so many times - strong calves of a rugby player, the right slightly thinner then the left, due to prolonged limp before they met, well-shaped, but very scarred knees and - as far as he could say, after having seen John a few times in nothing more than a towel - some rather solid thighs.

Quite unlike what the sheets and blankets covered now.

Quite unlike.

It was a wonder that John had managed to walk all the way from Bolivia to Brazil, but Sherlock suspected the good people who had found him must have understood what kind of a resource they had gained with the small Englishman and took care of him, as much as they could. Maybe put him on a cart, or a truck bed, whatever it was that they were travelling with. Probably cars, though.

Probably the stay in Brazil helped him in some aspects, but it definitely had detrimental effect on his health. Apart from the injuries to his hands that had happened even earlier, John's skin had lost that slight golden hue he had maintained since Afghanistan even despite the usual dearth of sunlight in London. Now he was pale. Pale, bleached, white. The raised pink scars of the cuts, no longer hidden by long sleeves, the angry red of incision sites, the bruising of IV ports, all contrasted wildly with his milk-white skin.

It looked unnatural.

John Watson was not supposed to look like that. John Watsons were not, as a rule, interior dwellers. They were supposed to be out there, taking the wind fully into their lungs, running after a criminal - or at least a ball - shouting with energy and glee, striking, shooting and soaking in the world around them with enthusiasm.

No John Watson ever, in any universe, was supposed to stay indoors, grow pale and meek and... and _lifeless_. It was against the law of nature.

John stirred, just a bit, and Sherlock sat back on his bed, affecting a position that would not betray the fact that he had just spent twenty minutes watching the interplay of light on his flatmate's relaxed face, the premature silver streaks in his hair (made him look more distinguished), the thick if short pale gold eyelashes...

He turned away _again_. He had some files to read, still, and watching John's slow process of waking up was very definitely Not On, right? Despite the fact how simply soft and adorable it was.

He felt... He had to chew on that, but then nodded to himself.

He felt guilty. In a weird, remote fashion.

If not for John's getting hurt, they would have never landed themselves in that position. Notwithstanding the hospital environs and security measures and the actual damage to John's body, it had been the most open, soul-baring, intimate two weeks in their life. And with John ( _finally_ , but Sherlock didn't even allow himself to think that word too loudly) letting go of some of his defences and admitting what he felt, maybe there was a chance for Sherlock to gain some better understanding of what John needed from him.

Because 'mixed messages' didn't even begin to cover it.

And considering all the...

He sat up straighter.

_Oh._

The postcards.

If 'B' was John, and he was, as was obvious and proven and...

_Oh._

John had been...

But no. It was impossible.

On the other hand...

 

_"If I were to apply the standard population's view to the presented evidence" he said slowly, aligning the newest addition with the previous gifts "I'd say he was flirting with me."_

_"Oh" Mycroft reaffixed the snowflake magnet to centre it properly. "I'd say he is, in fact."_

_"So, do I know him?"_

_He saw his brother frown slightly._

_"I'm... unsure. You have seen him, yes. More than once. Entirely unremarkable, as far as his appearance is concerned. But I don't think you know him, no."_

 

"Shit," he subvocalised.

He was going to kill his brother and he was almost sure he could get support from a pathologist that would declare it natural causes.

_Unremarkable, my ass._

Mycroft was so, so dead. He was basically ambulatory only because Sherlock cared more for John's condition than for making sure his brother finally got what was coming to him.

Also...

 

_...Brawling like schoolboys over one scrumptious operative."_

_"You describe him as if he was a creme puff, brother. Is your blood sugar low?"_

_Mycroft gave him a satisfied half-smile._

_"Let's say that had the man not been quite, quite taken, I would have_ _**recruited** _ _him myself."_

 

He was not going to be sick. It was not Mycroft fantasising about John, it was Mycroft trying to needle him - if unknowing, but then... If he knew, but...

 

_"Actually, they are of all orientations, than you very much. Including bi, in this particular case."_

 

If Mycroft had access to the MI5 archives regarding John, and someone had collected evidence of John's orientation, and they probably did, then Mycroft had a hard proof of John's orientation and so was telling the truth or at least deducing from some piece of data Sherlock didn't have access to, but then...

_Of course._

John was bi.

And it was rather glaringly obvious, in hindsight.

That pride socks postcard.

It was a declaration if Sherlock had ever seen one.

He knew the 'agent' had been male. He identified the behaviour displayed as flirting. The agent had been identified as bisexual by Mycroft. The agent was John.

_What the hell was that B about..._

_Russia. Ah. Of course. Alex, Alexander, Sasha... John, Ivan... Vanya._

_I wonder if there was some handsome boy in Saint Petersburg calling him 'Vanya'. Vanechka? Vaniusha?_

He shivered.

No, John had sent that postcard to him. The Winter Palace... What the hell was the meaning of the Winter Palace?

"It was pretty," John sighed. "Stop thinking aloud, please. And no, there were no... no handsome boys in Russia. Well, probably there were some, somewhere. Wasn't going to look for any. And not in France, or in Spain or in Poland or in bloody Finland. Especially not in Finland, very risky business, freezing one's bits off..."

Sherlock froze. All of him.

"There was one extremely fascinating young Chinese woman I've met in Japan that I've spend quite some time pressing to the mat, mind you, but she was mostly interested in my hand-to-hand combat skills, as she was collecting various fighting styles from all around the world. An Interpol officer, actually. Very skilled, about a foot taller than me. Very energetic. Kicked my ass a few times, too. Now, will you let me sleep for some more?"

Sherlock's eyes flickered to the morphine pump. Still medium, as the nurse had set it in the evening, but apparently John was one of these who were easily affected...

"Yes, John," he said quietly and saw his _friend_ close his eyes in relief.

"And the aurora... is really, really pretty. Thought of you... when I saw it. Wondered... what it would look like... reflected in your eyes," John's voice had that slight dreaming quality that made Sherlock focus on him even more. "I thought it would be... Nice..."

He slowly slumped down on his cot, listening to John's even and deep breaths.

_Bugger._

 

#

 

He had no idea how to bring it up. When the morning came, it seemed as if John had completely forgotten about their midnight conversation and the exchange at dawn, too. On one hand, it was kind of a relief - he didn't have to gear up and prepare for The Talk (whatever kind of Talk would that be), on the other hand... He had no idea how to proceed.

It also seemed more and more probable that Mycroft knew all the details of what had happened, because his morning grimace had been unbearable.

"I come bearing... well, not _gifts_. But more evidence. The MET had managed to locate Moriarty's flat in London and I have some pictures for you, gentlemen."

John's eyes were wide as they perused bit, glossy printouts of walls of Moriarty's dwelling. Sherlock. Everything papered with _Sherlock_.

"But why?" he asked finally. "Why would he leave this behind? If MET managed to find it, it means it was not very well hidden. No offence," he nodded to Lestrade, who had joined them in the meanwhile. "But Moriarty is Sherlock's level when it comes to twisty thinking, not our normal garden variety robber or... whatever. He doesn't need an obsession wall, he has it all in his head. Like Sherlock has his Mind Palace. Normal people - well, stupider people - need _this_ kind of stuff."

Sherlock looked up sharply and his eyes met his brother's over John's bowed head. They both snapped back down as John lined the photos on the duvet and grunted irritably.

"It looks fake," the doctor decided finally and looked up at the brothers. "Sherlock, look at it. It seems like a, well, _a murderboard_ , au rebours, but it's just a bunch of photos pasted over the walls at one time. Even obsessives gather their collections over a certain period of time. They don't just slam everything on the wall at once and leave it like that."

Ooh. That would be an interesting idea to check.

There was a spark of light in John's eyes now. Finally!

"I have to see it. Lestrade, address!" Sherlock was up and reaching for his coat by the time John uttered a short 'No!'.

He stopped and whirled to look at the soldier.

"What?"

"Lestrade, when was this place found?"

"More or less..."

"Three hour ago," Mycroft provided. "We entered the flat two hours and fifty minutes ago."

"Are any of your people still in there?"

"Obviously. Taking samples, fingerprints..."

"Get them _out_. And don't let this one," he pointed at Sherlock, "anywhere near that flat. He will start licking things, or, God forbid, take samples and bring them home."

"What?"

"The wallpaper, can't you see?"

They all turned towards the photos and found a little square pointed out by John.

"Green," Lestrade frowned. "Green wallpaper..."

"And the ceiling, green, too," John added as Mycroft whipped out his phone. "Tell them not to touch the photos! Don't take _anything_ down!"

"John?" Sherlock turned to the pale wraith in the middle of what seemed suddenly a much too big a bed. "What...?"

"Arsen, Sherlock."

"What kind of an idiot would..." he blinked, a long-forgotten file from his memory suddenly emerging to fill in what John had left unsaid. "Oh. A perfect trap."

"Old, peeling wallpaper, papered over with your photos. If they start taking them down, it will make the green paint diffuse in the air. You would have probably resisted the irritation, looked for clues, touched every surface..."

"John..."

"I..." John was bowed forwards, curling around his left arm, fingers of his right running up and down the row of stitches again. "You could have died, just like that...!"

"John, I'm _not_ going. Look at me. Not going. I'm right here and Mycroft had recalled all the agents from inside. They will find a replacement team in hazmat suits and the ones that were exposed will go get tested and treated. They will be fine."

The blond head shook as John breathed shallowly.

"Agent Watson," Mycroft stepped closer, but paused as Sherlock looked up at him. "Thank you. They had just noticed the symptoms and were leaving the flat."

"Oh," John slumped a bit. "That's... good. They should all be checked out, blood tests..."

"They are all heading to the office right now. You can see now why we need someone with your kind of... outlook on things, I hope."

Sherlock glanced from Mycroft to John, feeling slightly out of...

"You want John to work for MI6 locally, as one of the analysts?"

"Sherlock..."

"Just because your people are hopeless..."

"Sherlock...!"

"Seriously, all of you! Doctor Watson, you are supposed to be resting. And you two, I won't have you disturbing everyone with your arguments! You are in a public place!"

"I wanted them to shut up anyway," John groused and Sherlock quickly sat down next to him, watching the readouts anxiously. "Mycroft, I have considered your offer and I am seriously thinking about it, but you know it depends on..." he weaved towards his legs. "You don't need some doddering old doctor that would need to be coddled..."

"Actually, John," Mycroft lowered himself to the seat of one of the hospital torture-the-patient's-family chairs. "I need exactly that. I need someone who has been out there, who got their stuffing kicked out of them, who doesn't believe in their immortality anymore. And someone with two medical degrees, who is unafraid to ask questions."

"Mycroft..." he hissed, trying not to give in to his possessiveness.

"MI6 would also be able to recognise all your military experience and qualifications," Mycroft continued blandly. "We are authorised to access your records and so, the personnel department is also ready to assign you your proper rank. Retroactively. Counting from the moment of your deployment on the last mission."

"So, almost two years..." Sherlock squeezed John's hand. Recognition. Proper military rank and all the medals he deserved...

"Actually, I meant the last military mission, still in Afghanistan. Four and a half years," Mycroft corrected. "That would make you a major at the moment of your medical discharge."

"Why?" John looked up at Lestrade, who was leaning on the door frame, watching them all silently.

"John, this may come as a surprise, but MI6 does in fact think you are a capable agent. Even if you are grounded due to medical reasons, your brain is still functioning correctly. You had just alerted Mycroft to the risk of his people getting poisoned based on _photos_. What other proof do you need to understand that they need someone like you?"

Sherlock bit his tongue to stop himself from interjecting something inappropriate.

"But they had anyway already noticed it," John slowly stacked the photos. "It was nothing special."

Sherlock sighed and saw Mycroft doing exactly the same.

"John," he finally coughed and picked up the photos. "How much time did you spend looking at these prints?"

The doctor shrugged, "Maybe five minutes? Less? No idea how long we were talking."

"And in five minutes, or less, you had identified the potential threat to the people inside despite _not_ being there, with them, live. They had spent several hours not noticing that particular shade of green and not notifying anyone else!"

"Sherlock is quite right. They only fell back once they noticed the symptoms. None of them paid attention to the wallpaper."

"But... I mean..."

_Yes, John. My brother thinks you are smart enough for him to really, actually and properly hire you to work in MI6. As to me, I'm still torn between cheering you on and punching him in the nose._

He glared at his brother, who was, quite primly, picking a bit of lint from his sleeve.

"If you decide to say farewell to the office, you will be compensated in appropriate manner, for the time served. Combat pay equivalent. We will also make sure your military pension is updated to the correct value for a captain's rank. You will be expected, as per documents you've signed, not to share whatever you learnt in the time of your deployment with anyone. It would be considered treason."

"Mycroft..." he began quietly and intently. "We..."

His older brother's eyes were...

Tired.

_Oh._

John's hand on his elbow silenced him.

"If I stay on, I will need some better definition of my duties than I had until now. I will also need time off to get... to get myself in order."

"Medical leave."

"It will take some time after the physical therapy is done to get me office-worthy," John added uncertainly. "I mean..."

"Medical leave," Mycroft interrupted him sharply. "As much as you need. As much as _both_ of you need, in fact."

He frowned at the pronouncement.

"Both?"

The British Government sent him a thin half-smile.

"You are working for the same office now, brother. You two are an asset this country can't simply let go of. I can allow for certain amount of... freedom in your daily duties, now that there are two of you back together, but I will insist on being involved in ensuring your well-being."

"I will not be ordered about by some bureaucrat," he stood up and looked down his nose at his brother. "It is... I did it temporarily. For the sake of the 'agent' you had on the ground. Well, now the agent is back. Why should I continue..."

"Maybe we should step out? DI, would you please stay with doctor Watson? I need to talk to my brother."

"There is no way in hell...!"

 

####

 

He watched Sherlock stretching his neck in an uncomfortable manner and being led out of the room by Mycroft. Greg slid into the chair vacated by the older brother and sighed, shaking his head.

"Sometimes I don't know what these two are thinking. They operate on a totally different level... And with what we found today, Mycroft was really shocked. I mean, I've seen him annoyed at Sherlock or worried for him when he landed himself in a hospital, but this? He was _terrified_. He was honest to God terrified. Not that I wasn't freaked out, but it's not my little brother that someone had posted over every surface of their flat."

John sighed.

"They have so much history... And now Sherlock blames Mycroft for sending me away, too. So the amount of bad blood between them..."

Greg rubbed his face, visibly exhausted.

"I got the whole around the world in two years thing, even though - bloody fuck, really, an assassin aiming at _me_? - but tell me one thing, because getting an explanation from these two is like pulling teeth - where the hell did Sherlock actually find you? I mean, what were you doing in _Rio_ of all places?"

"Would you believe me if I told you I was watching a football stadium being built?" John managed to smile at Greg's astonished face. "I was managing a gang that controlled construction workers hired on the site."

"That's..." the DI shook his head. "That's a new level of weird even for the two of you. I hope you aren't planning to take over any kind of criminal enterprise here in London, because I have to honestly warn you, there are rules that say I'd have to intervene."

"No, no..." John leaned back on his pillows. "I think I'm done being on the shady side of the law. I mean, well, apart from whatever Sherlock..."

"Don't even want to hear it. Nope. No. Just shut up. Let's keep it at 'No, no', all right?"

John smiled at the DI crookedly.

"So, how is it going these days at the MET? Without Sherlock pestering you for cases or dropping in on your crime scenes?"

Greg shrugged and sipped his coffee in silence for a moment.

"My sergeants had to finally get in shape and stop expecting him to pop out of a corner with a solution ready and gift-wrapped. We failed a few cases, I'm sure, but they are improving. I think having him around made them lazy and undisciplined, because he was always there to save their asses."

"Good..." John felt a bit floaty for a moment, trying to gather his thoughts. "Ah. What would you think if he started doing it again?"

"As long as there is someone with him to pull him back when he tries to get himself killed, I will look the other way."

"Ah," John coughed and looked away. "That."

"Yes, that. I thought that physical therapist was supposed to put you back on your feet. Why isn't she here, torturing you to make sure you can keep up with that idiot?"

John turned his hand, showing the stitches.

"They hope they can get the function of this hand restored, so as long as I have fresh sutures, Lana doesn't torture me too much."

Greg's smile widened.

"Lana, you say? So you are on first name basis with your therapist? Intimate, doctor Watson, very intimate!"

"Piss off," he murmured, but the smile kept tugging at the corner of his lips. "Let me tell you about the day she held me to the bed and I screamed, begging for mercy..."

 

####

 

"You can't be serious."

"Deadly."

"I won't allow it."

"It's his decision."

"You baited the hook rather well, brother. If it is up to him, he will take it."

"Would you take it away from him, Sherlock? With us, he can be recognised for what he is. For who he is. For the low and the high, his skills and his weaknesses. He will be given duties that will be challenging and will make use of his hard-earned expertise. He will be referred to by his proper rank. What do _you_ have to offer him, brother?"

Sherlock inhaled and held back the angry retort.

"I..." he felt a bit of vertigo and reached out to the wall. "We could go back to what we used to do," he finished so lamely even he heard the weakness of that statement.

"Yes? And what role would the good doctor play in your daily work? He won't be able to run around with you, like in the old days. He won't be the steady hand with a pistol behind your back, having 'your six' as the military call it. No more tackling of suspects to the ground for John Watson. So, Sherlock, what do you want him to do for you? Brew your tea?"

"Why not?" Sherlock hissed. "John's tea is..."

"Be realistic, Sherlock. How soon will he find himself sitting in his room, considering whether swallowing his gun won't be the right way out?"

He felt faint, but that definitely was due to the fact that he hadn't eaten in the last day and not the vision now playing out in front of his eyes.

A strong hand caught him and his brother helped him to straighten himself out.

"Now, may I add one specific thing..." Mycroft leaned closer. "MI6 has no policy against fraternisation between the employees."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter left. What now? :)


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Physical therapy, flat reorganisation and sudden revelations.  
> Also, Moriarty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You will see that the chapter count has gone up again.  
> Explanation is simple. I can't plan. I'm a lousy planner.  
> But! All the chapters (21 - 24) are now written.  
> They have been split for narration purposes, not because I want to be annoying. It just makes more sense for each of them to be separate.  
> I will post them all over the next few hours, so feel free to comment on whichever of them, or to wait for ch 24 to be posted.  
> Thank you all for the wonderful journey and for staying with the story, despite the ominous tags and some angsty and dark moments. Leave me a signal if you liked the way it ended and I hope you will either visit some of my other stories or have a look at my [blog](http://fanfik.wordpress.com) or [tumblr](https://srebrnafh.tumblr.com/).

Investigation had stalled on their end, as there were no new materials coming and, while both of them were quite able to theorise from scant evidence, there had to be _some_ evidence for them to use as seed for their thoughts.

There was _nothing_. Until there was something, and it was the information that _none_ of the twenty-eight Richard Brooks was in use. All of them had been checked, their flats visited (most didn't exist or were inhabited by someone else), their workplaces verified and under constant surveillance. None of them had shown up.

Moriarty had gone to the ground.

 

#

 

Another day, another surgery. Right leg this time, with Lieutenant Doctor Petersen assisting yet again. The woman actually came out to the corridor to talk to him while John was being prepped and made a valiant attempt at bolstering his courage. He braved it with patience, not willing to annoy someone who would repeatedly be putting their hands on John in the coming weeks, but it _was_ slightly irritating. He wasn't _afraid_. He was just... concerned about John's prospects. It wasn't like he was _panicking_. He simply couldn't focus on anything else... Including reading the news, which was what Lt Petersen had noticed, having caught him as he stared blindly at a black screen of his mobile.

Reading case files was similarly out of question. If there had been any that would make sense anyway. The evidence from Moriarty's flat turned out to be all bogus, just like John had pointed out - all photos and newspapers stuck to the wall on the same day, roughly speaking. The hazmat team managed to get the stalkerish decoration removed in big chunks and to decontaminate the flat - the wallpaper was original proper Victorian green, generously slathered with arsen and probably poisonous to touch. The primary team of agents were resting in the MI6 infirmary and expected to make full recovery, but Sherlock had to admit that were it not for John's well-timed protest, he would have probably been worse off than they came to be.

Unlike them, he most probably _would_ have licked his fingers, just like John had predicted. His friend had an unerring sense of what kind of most idiotic errors Sherlock could make in their daily life, and Sherlock had to admit that, more often than it was healthy, John's fears weren't baseless.

He decided to take a small walk around the interior garden, breathe London in, as much as he could in the carefully guarded confines of the small square between the buildings. It wasn't only John who was not made to be stuck indoors -- Sherlock was starting to feel the claustrophobic qualities of the low corridors and John's -- their -- room rather strongly. A mid-sized and reasonably muscled man in denims and checkered flannel shirt peeled himself off the wall of the corridor and followed him - rather discreetly, which meant Mycroft had upgraded them from very obvious guards to a more subtle security detail comprised of lower rank agents, perfectly suited to tasks like that.

"Do you have any cigarettes?" he asked the man with a sigh and was rewarded with incredulous stare.

"Mr Holmes said you were allowed to have one, on the condition that you-- air yourself thoroughly before coming back inside," he scoffed. "Of course I have them."

"Ah, of course. Wouldn't do to let the addict seek some on his own," Sherlock suggested wearily. "Let's find a bench and let me savour this in peace."

"You are doing quite well," the guard offered after a moment of silence. "If it was me and my wife was in this state, I'd be sitting in that corridor, nails bitten to the quick."

"Well, not all of us are prone to such-- human ways of managing our nerves."

They sat quietly for a few breaths.

"That, and Agent Watson would have hit you with his lunch tray if you did something that unhygienic," the man provided quite seriously.

Sherlock found himself quite unable to disagree with that assessment.

He even allowed himself to smirk.

While John still had his moments of weakness, times when he slipped back to the uncertain and broken state that reminded Sherlock so vividly of the hours spent on the plane, he improved significantly, both physically and emotionally, making great progress with every passing day. Soon, he started to scorn the "fussing" and "coddling" that the nurses were prone to. He actually began ordering Sherlock around, just from time to time, telling him to eat, drink, sleep or get a shower... Just like he used to.

Sherlock, quite frankly, took a great dose of delight in being able to return the nagging with some of his own, to the general tone of "Only if you do it first", because doctors were the most terrible, awful of patients and John was a living, breathing and very annoying example of that, forgetting to eat, trying to weasel out of some less than pleasant therapy sessions, scoffing at too-frequent (in his opinion) temperature checks or, just to be perverse, not admitting that he felt poorly after some parts of his therapy and trying to soldier on without morphine.

Sherlock reminded himself on regular basis to pay closer attention to John and pestered him to take better care of himself and to cooperate with his doctors. From time to time his prodding was met with John's incredulously opened eyes and he felt the weird swap of their usual roles.

At least John refrained from calling people out on what he deduced about them, limiting himself to commenting on these details to Sherlock in an undertone. Sherlock knew he would not have been that merciful, had their positions been reversed.

All that activity, combined with regular sessions of physiotherapy (courtesy of Lana Petersen), massages (Sherlock assisted and performed some under the watchful eye of a specialist), hydrotherapy and whatever-else-therapy that "that torturer" (as John had dubbed Lt Petersen) had scheduled, made them pass the time rather quickly, despite the complete dearth of news regarding Moriarty.

 

#

 

All that activity, however, primarily engaged John, and in many cases it was not something Sherlock could assist in, no matter how open the hospital was to Sherlock's presence in general and how accepted their assumed partnership was by everyone involved in John's care. Somehow, because nobody ever actually voiced it aloud, and nobody referred to it in more specific detail, they never had a chance to deny it - Sherlock wouldn't be the one to volunteer it and John seemed to ignore the very fact whenever it was alluded to.

This left Sherlock with a lot of free time on his hands and not too many topics to engage himself in. There was always watching the footage, but not that many hours of active recording were left. He could read John's documentation - again, but he didn't want to be reminded of the injuries his soldier had sustained. He could read up on the needed care at home and the adjustments the flat would require, but... Actually, right at this moment, as he waited for John to be wheeled back after the latest skin graft, that last part sounded, if not interesting, then at least worthy of his attention. He had to admit that their flat, as it was right now, was not an ideal place for a person of limited mobility, and the "upper bedroom" was even worse.

Therefore, point 1 - John will have to sleep downstairs. Options?

Sherlock leaned back in the buttery soft chair that had one day arrived together with Anthea's morning lack of news and steepled his fingers in front of his face.

He would have to think about options, but sofa was out of the question, for sure.

Point 2. They would have to reorganise their life. John would need plenty of rest, good food and mental stimulation of a balanced kind. John, when reminded, would manage the first, with sighing annoyance. Mrs Hudson and various deliveries would do for the second. It would fall to Sherlock to provide the last.

Point 3. No risky cases, at least for the time being. Without John by his side... no cases, period. Well, maybe, small ones. Stuff that Lestrade would be able to bring in and describe. He would only leave John alone if there was no other option of finding evidence.

Point 4. Moving the customer-side of their operation to 221C. Whatever happened, John would not be sleeping in his old bedroom and would need the space to allow easy movement. It would be best achieved by removing some of the permanent clutter and that meant their living room would have to stop serving as their office and working room.

Sherlock did not, under any circumstances and even to himself, wish to admit that he simply didn't want any strangers invading the privacy of their flat. They would have to ask Mrs Hudson to stop sending people upstairs... Maybe invest in a better doorbell...

He frowned.

Maybe only take cases by e-mail and meet with clients at specifically set appointments. That would be most effective and would not endanger their personal space. With what he had earned and _not_ spent when working for MI6, he could easily afford to renovate and refurbish 221C, making it vastly more useful for everyone. That would also ease John's mind regarding experiments...

Ah. MI6. That was...

He opened his eyes, but resisted a sigh that was pushing itself out on its own volition.

They were, officially, still employed. John was owed rather sizeable amount of money in combat pay, and Sherlock had been accumulating his salary on the savings account simply because there was nothing that he had felt worth spending that salary on. John, now on sick leave, was having his standard wages deposited to his account. Sherlock, delegated to assisting John _and_ in the middle of investigation, still counted as an employee.

He froze for a moment. They were _earning money_ just for getting themselves into better working condition. That had never been a consideration for him before, but ever since Mycroft's rant about his treatment of John, he paid attention, and now, especially...

_Oh._

_This is what he meant._

_John was always so intent on his locum work..._

_Indeed._

He sighed. It was hard, and yet logical to admit that it would be rather sensible of them to agree to Mycroft's proposition. His brother, despite all his faults, could be trusted to do well by his employees. He could also, however much it galled Sherlock, be trusted to do well by his brother. And he had also managed to bait his hook with the fattest, most succulent and tempting promise he could have chosen. Mycroft knew that Sherlock would do anything for John and that, while reasonably content in his life as a civilian, John had a still-seeping wound at the bottom of his soul, right where the unacknowledged military achievements lived. And festered.

And if being in an official organisation that recognised his skills and capabilities was what would make John happy, then Sherlock would not be the one to deny him that. There would anyway be _months_ before John would be up to the challenge of coming back to work, and as Mycroft declared he needed them as a team, Sherlock would have just as long to prepare himself mentally for the perspective of the soul-crushing tedium of daily desk work, interspersed with rare cases of something actually interesting.

He leaned back on the wall behind his cot and checked the time.

John would be back any minute, still groggy from anaesthesia and a bit loopy. It would be a temptation Sherlock managed to resist until now.

Because John in that state was honest. Very, very honest. Not oversharing, as such, but when asked questions, he was _honest_. The nurses learnt to ask very specifically for his condition after one of them was informed that, in fact, the hospital food made him queasy, the lingering stink of disinfectant was irritating, one of the orderlies was drunk and she should not be covering zits with makeup. And the poor woman only asked if he could share his general feelings about the day he had just had.

So Sherlock was tempted.

He was also highly aware of the consequences of even attempting to ask John for anything more pertinent than his opinion about weather.

But how long could he go on _not knowing_?

 

#

 

At the end it was like an anti-climax.

And they found out that John had been right again and the consulting criminal allowed himself to become too comfortable. Or maybe he lost enough of his people to lose some of his imperviousness against other people's searching fingers.

Moriarty was dead.

Moriarty had, in fact, been dead for quite a while.

Moriarty had nearly been buried under his _other_ fake identity, "James Walterson" (one of twelve of the name), but the morgue hadn't been able to find some of his documents - due to the fact that they didn't exist - so they kept him in cold storage, waiting for the feedback from the police. When the local station received a request from MI5 to search their records for all men matching certain list of characteristics, they already had a suspicious corpse file on their hands, and at that point it took them _only_ another week to put these two facts together...

As the information was reported to him, Sherlock sat down, stunned at the news, his knees quite literally giving in.

The day John had his second neural surgery, an unidentified man of supposedly South American origins had assaulted a diminutive Oxford philosophy professor by the name of James Walterson in the middle of his lunch break, shouted abuse in his face in front of several dozens of students and then shot him fatally. He had been subsequently gunned down by a police officer in the process of being placed under arrest.

"Bolivian?" he asked finally, sliding down, into one of the plastic hospital chairs.

"That was our guess, too", a fellow analyst (Jamie? Joana?) confirmed in an undertone, watching Mycroft from the corner of her eye. His brother returned the look and she turned to the thick file she had just delivered - and was the main author of. "From the students' reports, as some of them study Portuguese and/or Spanish, the man was speaking in some weird mix of these two, and cursing their professor for providing bad intel that had led to, from what they could understand, fall of the 'whole family'. This correlates with something we've got from the US. It seems, from our last week interagency cooperation exchange, the CIA had taken down an entire branch of smuggling groups down that side of South America, pulling them like beads on a thread. This guy matched the description of one of minor leaders, one who had avoided capture. We are still searching the logs for the timing, but he arrived in England, managed to check Moriarty's current identity through the Dark Net connections they maintained - that much we got from his laptop - avoided Moriarty's guards - if there were any - and killed the man, in front of all these kids."

"I wonder what kind of intel could have been that crucial" Sherlock shook his head, checking his watch.

"Oh. There was something about 'watching for the blonde agent' and wrong description being given. They caught someone else and missed the CIA agent completely."

"W-what?"

They both turned towards the doorway leading to the physical therapy rooms, where an assistant had just wheeled in John.

"Doctor Watson! I'm so happy to see you up and about!" the analyst (Jasmin? Jamila?) jumped to her feet and approached him, hand outstretched.

"Sorry, can't shake today, hands done in. What do you mean, wrong description...?"

Sherlock took over the handles, pushed him to his room and helped him to switch to his bed, all the while watching his friend carefully.

"It seems you were the downfall of the consulting criminal, John" he managed to say at last. "The very last and biggest error he made was providing your description to the Bolivian part of his operation."

"How?" John's jaw tightened.

"Come, have a look at this report. I've just learnt about it."

He watched John make his way slowly through the file in front of him.

"OK. Talk," the soldier demanded briefly, through clenched teeth.

"He gave them a warning about a CIA agent but provided your description."

"He knew I was alive," John sighed, leaning back on the pillows.

"He also knew I didn't know, which was the whole point. Back to Bolivia - they took you, they tortured you and they focused completely on you..."

"Missing the real CIA agent" John concluded. "I see. And now they had been finally brought down, because while they were busy with me, the CIA was working on them at their leisure."

"Correct" the analyst - Josie, yes, Josie - sat on the other side of John's bed and leaned in eagerly. "The last man left came to Oxford and gunned Moriarty down. Our people are now working on the details of Moriarty's cover, but it seems he had actually maintained an academic career of sorts for his tetriary persona and got himself hired as a temporary lecturer at the Oxford university, of all places. But as to the shooting itself, we have dozens of witnesses, CCTV recordings and both corpses. You two will be asked to come to the morgue to check them. Doctor Hooper had already confirmed one of them as 'Jim from IT'," Josie lowered her voice to a whisper. "She sounded rather vicious about it."

"She would" John agreed softly. "When can we go? Does this mean we can go home? Sherlock? According to Lana, I could be out in three days, if nothing new arises."

"Oh, we can," he interlaced their fingers. "As soon as my annoying brother has his people scan our flat for any... surprises."

"I suppose I can wait a bit, if it's for a good reason," John's voice was tired, but clear. "I won't be able to climb the stairs yet, anyway."

All the options of carrying John up the seventeen steps - and over the threshold! - flashed through Sherlock's mind.

"The hospital will provide a carrier, I suppose," Josie suggested. "That's what they did when my aunt broke her hip but was released home from the hospital."

Sherlock didn't miss John's slight eyeroll at the thought of being treated the same as an infirm elderly lady.

_Oh. Here he is._

_My John._

_Just as he is supposed to be._


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> MI6.  
> And some more thinking.  
> Also, Sherlock trying to imagine John in a tailored suit.  
> And stress.

Their temporary stay in the MI6 living quarters was made all that much more comfortable by moving Sherlock to one of a pair of connected rooms and keeping the middle door open at all times. There was a new set of specialists waiting, ready to get to work on 'Agent Watson's' injuries and Lana Petersen travelled with them in order to oversee proper execution of the therapy plotted out by her and the neurologists at Barts. Mrs Hudson, still remaining under the watchful eye of a group of younger agents, was their chef worry, as they had no idea how to convey to her the news of John's recovery - of John being alive!

Understandably, she reacted rather strongly, but seeing John being wheeled in on the chair, pushed by Sherlock and overseen by Dr Petersen, she only let out a long wail and pulled him into a hug, babbling incomprehensibly. A round of explanations and reassurances followed, broken only when Sherlock noticed John's flagging participation and authoritatively ordered a break.

"Ooh, look at the two of you. John had been taking care of you all that time when you lived upstairs, and now you can return the favour! There is nothing better in such hard times than having a dedicated partner, dear!"

He felt a few people stiffen and he tensed up himself, expecting John's reaction, but all they got was a whispered "Yes, Sherlock is taking very good care of me" and a faint slump of John's shoulders.

_Oh. Well. He probably doesn't have enough energy to argue._

But as they found their way to the windowless quarters in the belly of the MI6 beast and Sherlock assisted John in moving to the bed and divesting himself of the outer layer of clothing, there was nothing... Nothing even slightly annoyed in the doctors relaxed stance.

_He is tired. If she repeats it tomorrow, he will try to correct her, I'm sure._

He sat in the deep chair next to John's bed and watched as John fought an uneven battle with his exhaustion.

 

#

 

"Sherlock," John's voice slurred a bit, thick with sleep. "Sherlock, go to bed. I'll be fine."

 _No, you won't,_ he wanted to scream. _You will not be fine and this is all my fault, because you wanted to save me, because I was an irresponsible idiot, and now..._

"Sherlock," a hand upon his knee, warmth seeping through the thin fabric of his trousers. "You will get a crick in your neck from sleeping here, and I can't do anything to help you with _that_. Come on, up, up. Take a proper shower and relax. We are in the best guarded building in London, you can stop being on duty all the time."

He blinked awake finally and looked down, to where the short, stocky fingers were resting atop his patella. Steady. If not as strong as they used to be, then at least hot shaky anymore. John's hand, on his knee.

He didn't want to leave. His room, being on the other side of the wall, could just as well be miles away. What he did want was to crawl into the bed next to John, pull the convalescing soldier up, over himself, and let his hands roam, discovering all the interesting parts of John, from the way his hair (now fuzzy and soft like a baby duck down) looked up close to the shape of that butt he used to admire when John wore denims. All the lifetime ago.

"Earth to Sherlock," John's hand squeezed and Sherlock's thoughts stuttered and quieted.

_Ooh._

"Ah-I-I will," he coughed to cover the slight slip. "Yes, this chair is not perfect for the purpose. But..." he looked up, _finally_ , and met John's sleepy gaze with his. "Are you sure you will be fine by yourself?"

"Don't worry," came a soft answer. "I will hear you, won't I?"

He relented. Proper shower - or even better, a soak - sounded heavenly. Hospitals were very utilitarian in that area, but MI6 provided as much comfort to its grounded agents as it could, including a long bathtub in each suite.

John's soft smile and a little pat on the knee sent him on his way towards cleanliness.

 

#

 

They had agreed on a kind of daily agenda - early morning start, an 'assistant' (nicer name for an orderly) coming to fetch John for his PT session, Sherlock joining the analysts in the 'war room' and digging into the scant material available on Moriarty's potentially remaining subordinates. A lunch together (a lot of protein and vegetables for both of them, additional supplements for John) and an afternoon spent on smaller exercises, from fine motor skills (drawing patterns and colouring - John's stony face when he was presented with a flower colouring book had been priceless) to memory practise and report analysis.

Right now it was memory practise in particular that seemed to be giving John a little trouble. Sherlock wasn't sure why it was, considering what he had learnt about his friends in the two years since John's... disappearance.

John _was_ highly intelligent. In fact, in an average room free of any Holmes family representatives, John would be, with good probability, in the top three of the most intelligent persons present. In a room full of MI6 consultants and analysts, John was constantly in the top ten percent in the category of education (two degrees and various specialisation courses), hand-to-hand combat (before the imprisonment, of course), spatial orientation (subconscious, always knowing where the exits were, tracking all people present), marksmanship and language skills. He was also, in Sherlock's personal ranking, the prime expert in the category of looking like an absolute dunce.

Which was a perfect masquerading technique, very effective when faced with a world of people who don't have time for even a second glance. John was like a... He couldn't find a good parable. John _was_ just a common bloke like any other, he fit in most everywhere, be could smile, he could frown, he could give a suspect an uppercut, he could look at you innocently while his hands were still covered with gunshot residue. He could probably look quite well in a tailored suit and smile blandly at various kind of aristocratic twits, should Sherlock subject him to the company of his extended family one day.

On that note...

Sherlock blinked, trying to get rid of the vision of John wrapped in a grey three-piece with... well, with subtle colour accents... Navy blue? No. Maroon... No, deep red wine. He breathed deeply, stored the image in his Mind Palace and refocused. John. Memories. Pretending to be a dunce, yes. Fitting in with the crowd, yes.

But not now. Now, it was something different. They were going through the basic exercise with a deck of cards, exactly what John had started with in these weird days when he was undergoing a crash course in being a spy, and John's results were abysmal. And John seemed more and more stressed by the fact, but couldn't explain what the issue was and how he could be suddenly too dense to remember even twenty cards, not to mention fifty-two.

"No," the deck hit the table and the colourful array of pictures exploded in all directions. "It isn't working! I can't... My head..."

"You just have to focus properly," Sherlock sighed, collecting the cards. "It's obvious there is something distracting you, but you have to do better, if you want MI6..."

"I don't give a flying fuck about MI6," John barked and pushed away from the table. "I don't care. This is useless, it's all useless!"

"John, you need to calm down, this is not an effective way of conducting this particular exercise..."

"Oh, be quiet! I can't, so I can't, so I _can't_. I'm not... not..." he saw John inhale quickly and shiver. "Just, stop talking, Sherlock. You have no idea what I can and can't do. This? I can't. No, I don't know why. I just..."

John's hands were shaking as he lowered his face into them.

_Shite._

Sherlock was not in custom of swearing, even in his thoughts - unlike John, whose filthy mouth often uttered a variety of 'fucks', 'cocks', 'dicks' and 'arseholes' - but this was an occasion that warranted application of a vulgarism. Or two applications.

 _Shite_.

John was shaking and hyperventilating.

The floor was fortunately carpeted with something soft, but he wasn't really paying attention. All he knew was the feeling of John's shaking body and uneven breathing as he pulled him down, into a tight embrace.

"Breathe, John. In, hold, out. Just like me. You know that. In, hold, out. We don't have to do this today. Or ever. Right now, you just need to calm down. Remember, pneumothorax..."

"I..." John stuttered and tipped his head to lean on Sherlock's shoulder. "I _am_ a doctor, despite all the signs to the contrary. I know the risks. I know I shouldn't... But, Sherlock, I _can't_. There is something wrong, and I can't stop thinking about it, and my brain feels like it's _off_ somehow. I just can't see them, in my mind."

"I suppose, in the current conditions, your brain is working way under its expected capacity," Sherlock sighed, sneaking a hand to John's wrist. _Still too quick._ "I think we could... Well, postpone this? In, hold, out. You're still hyperventilating, a bit."

They sat for a moment, just listening to the other's breathing.

"I wanted to focus and I couldn't find that place in my mind where I put them, and then I started panicking," John admitted softly. "I'm not sure I will be such a great asset to MI6 anymore."

_Oh, brilliant. Now my brother has gone and put more pressure on him. And John is panicking, because he feels like he isn't up to the challenge._

_And so did I, I suppose._

That was a sobering thought if he ever had one.

"You don't have to. We can always tell Mycroft that we want out. He won't force us. He will try to lure us back in and make some use of us, but if you don't feel like it, we can tell him right now," he cautiously patted John's shoulder. "But you should think about it first. I mean, they need people with some modicum of intelligence here, otherwise how can they call themselves an _intelligence_ agency?"

The joke was weak, but John laughed anyway, and relaxed, slightly. Which in turn allowed Sherlock to relax. Slightly.

Which in turn made his body wake up. Not so slightly.

_John, so close, warm._

How was he supposed now to manage all these intrusive thoughts, when reality itself wouldn't allow him even the tiniest break? How was he supposed to distance himself from the way his traitorous body responded to John's need for closeness and support?

His friend was honestly, innocently in need of some consolation, and while Sherlock was more than willing to provide this, he would not wish to scare John away by giving in to the... baser parts of his brain.

These parts that happily redirected a lot of blood 'downstairs' every time he came into closer contact with John, because apparently living in close quarters for a prolonged period of time simply had to trigger the reflexes he had long before trained into submission. Or so he thought.

John needed him, period. John needed physical contact, that was obvious. Sherlock was not going to allow John to go without. At the same time, John obviously needed it to be... Sherlock sighed internally.

"Thank you," said a choked voice from the vicinity of his shoulder. "I'm such a wet blanket these days, I can barely stand myself. I'm so grateful you are here, you have no idea."


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back home.  
> A lot of dithering and some talking.  
> Slow way towards improvement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the last part will be posted in the morning, CET time :)

It took much longer than anyone expected - and definitely longer than any of them had patience for - to ensure that there were no remaining parts of Moriarty's network that would pose a risk to their lives and that 221B was, in fact, clear of all and any last-minute gifts from the dearly departed consulting criminal. Incidentally, Mycroft had used the opportunity and quietly replaced their windows with bullet-resistant and much tighter versions that rendered the flat significantly less noisy. A few more changes were introduced, including some updates of the kitchen area (a new fridge instead of one of the cabinets and an exhaust vent over the table) and a smart heating system that depended much less on the fireplace.

Sherlock wanted to be able to scoff at these changes, but found himself unable to, since John seemed to be rather delighted with them.

The last and biggest change was the rearrangement of their living room and inclusion of a surprisingly nice folding bed that would allow John to sleep downstairs in comfort and not be forced to brave the additional climb. The dresser from the his bedroom had been moved to stand next to it, providing a makeshift night table, while some small heaps of objects that had been gathering dust in that very spot had been moved upstairs to make place for the furniture.

On their first evening in, Sherlock watched as John stumbled - but walked again! and with much less pain than he was in when they met in Brazil! - first to the loo and then, pyjama-clad, to that new bed and stretched himself with pleasure under his own thick duvet and blankets, so unlike the thin and overwashed standard of hospital bed coverings.

The lowered lights allowed them to coexist in peace in these limited quarters, with John slowly giving in to exhaustion and Sherlock reading quietly in his chair.

"Sherlock?" came a small whisper. "Would you... would you play for me?"

The time stood still for a moment.

 

_Just play for me once, before I go. Please? Will you? Before I leave? Something small, doesn't have to be anything special, of course..._

 

He shook himself off. John seemed not to remember almost anything from the plane. He never alluded to any details of what they talked about (not to mention the proposal), so it was possible that everything that had happened on their way home was now lost to him. Fever, disorientation, near collapse of his entire system - in such circumstances the body economised and cut down on supporting less vital parts. Their escape and subsequent flight to London would, most probably, be a blur to John forever.

"Of course," his voice sounded alien in his own ears. "Always."

 

#

 

They had better days and worse days. Better days when they went for a walk - slowly, cautiously, counting every step and turning back while John still felt strong enough. Some good days were spent on playing one board game or another, including chess (John, when provoked, turned out to be a reasonably good opponent). Mrs Hudson came up with tea and stayed for a round of checkers or one of the new games that Lestrade had delivered at their doorstep as a "Welcome Home" gift for John.

Good days ended on a couch, with an action movie playing quietly in front of them and with John falling asleep on Sherlock in the middle of the main shootout.

Bad days, though, started usually with rain. Rain was bad, because it both reduced the chances for a walk, reduced the amount of sun they would be getting and made John's wounds ache in an unexpected fashion. Rainy days were bed days, blanket days, hot tea and ibuprofen days. They were migraine days and grumpy days and grumbling days and Sherlock hated them, because John was at the same time grumpy and drowning in guilt for being grumpy, which made him resentful, which made him unnecessarily snarky, which...

Bad days were _bad_. They usually ended with an argument, or silence, or, what was probably the worst, with John wrapping himself in his blankets and turning away from the room.

Bad days ended with nightmares.

Bad days turned into bad nights, nights of John writhing on his bed, shaking and begging someone unseen for something in Spanish. Or Portuguese. Or Aymara. Rarely in English. Bad nights meant whimpers and tears and shivering and John trying to claw his skin off.

On bad nights, Sherlock played.

By a careful process of trial and error he found the best combination of melodies to pull John out of the grasp of his dreams and guide him slowly towards less troubled sleep, or at least to painful wakefulness. Anything was better than that unheard and impossible to be fulfilled prayer of "please, stop, please, I will tell you anything, please, please, please..."

 

#

 

A far, muted cry woke him up.

The living room was never completely dark, with one lamp in the corner left switched on, to ensure they'd have no problems navigating across the reorganised space. As Sherlock paused in the doorway, he scanned the situation quickly. John was sitting up in his bed, shivering like a leaf, eyes absent. Sherlock wasted no time in getting into it and pulling him closer, covering them both with the soft quilt and holding John tight.

"I'm here," he whispered, as the shaking slowly eased. "I am here, you are not alone. You are in London. You're home."

"He will kill you," John sighed. "He will find some way and he will kill you, because I'm back. I wasn't supposed to be back. I wasn't supposed to come home. He may be dead, but he will find a way to get to you, like he promised. He will kill you, kill them all, and he will leave me to watch it..."

He combed through the sweaty, slowly-growing blond hair with his fingers and pulled John up, to make the shorter man lean against his chest as they both reclined. Time was, he would not have been able to do it so easily - his doctor may have been shorter than him, but the muscled solidness, the proper _amount_ of the man himself would have stopped him. Now the bones under his hands seemed as frail as a bird's and the muscles were nearly nonexistent.

"He won't," he murmured. "We have new windows, bullet-proof and all that. And he _is_ dead and you _did_ really take him down. There is nobody left to carry out any from-beyond-the-grave instructions. Mycroft is quite sure about it. Even Moriarty can't do much now that they have cremated the bastard."

John's huff of something almost like a laughter warmed the small area of Sherlock's chest where his friend's head was now resting.

"Vampires have risen from the dead, the grave and the crypt, but have never managed it from the cat," he recited slowly.

_Hallucinations?_

"That's Terry Pratchett, by the way," a whisper provided.

_Ah, popculture._

John's body was slowly relaxing, going all soft and pliant and melding to his long frame so sweetly he felt his throat closing with a small sob at how perfect the feeling was.

_Just don't forget yourself. This is not about you, it's about his comfort._

_It is really nice to have someone who wants to cuddle, though._

_Don't you dare say this aloud._

 

#

 

And it happened, every few days, sometimes once in a fortnight. In these eerie early morning hours, John would cling to him in quiet desperation, sometimes spilling his fears of Moriarty, sometimes just checking if Sherlock was still there. Sherlock allowed himself to be used as a replacement teddy bear - if it made John feel safer, he was all for it, in fact.

He was a grownup. He could keep this as casual as was needed, while providing John with the required human contact. That was what John would have done for him, had the situation been reversed, after all.

 

#

 

John was sleeping peacefully for once, after having exhausted himself at his PT session and making a successful attempt at memorising the deck of cards. The occasion warranted in fact a hug, into which Sherlock allowed himself to be pulled, and a lazy, relaxed - very relaxed - evening in front of some inane science-fiction show about space cowboys. Sherlock refrained from uttering two out of three remarks that the characters and the set design that had popped into his mind and allowed John to enjoy the episode in relative peace. The discussion of merits of various characters, in which John defended the broody captain of the ship (Mal?) against Sherlock's accusations of lack of logic in his actions had brightened John considerably and gave his eyes that blue sparkle that had been missing ever since they came back home.

And even tired and wan, John still bickered with Sherlock amicably as they cleaned the table and brushed their teeth side by side, finally falling into his bed before he raised up on one elbow and said, with a tone of finality "But his main and most important advantage is that he is played by Nathan Fillion. And Nathan Fillion probably looks sexier in long coat and braces than John Barrowman and that is _something_."

He smiled, blinked and in a split second his head hit the pillow and he was asleep, just like that.

_Well._

_That's not what you usually hear from fans of some SF series, is it?_

_Maybe it is, though._

He gathered his laptop quietly and retired to his bedroom, living the main room awash in the soft glow of the corner lamp. He stretched on his bed, laptop on the floor just by his hand, and slowly reviewed the whole evening of interactions in his Mind Palace.

"Mycroft was definitely right. In the general terms, at last. John definitely does show interest in men, but apparently not arrogant, annoying detectives," he sighed, rolling to his back. And he couldn't blame John. It wasn't John's fault he didn't like... Well, he obviously liked Sherlock. Maybe even loved, in a particular, friendly and platonic way. They spent more time in each others' pockets than some couples he observed.

But, however much it made him sound like a teenage girl from a sitcom, John didn't like him _that way_.

 

#

 

This particular day had been aggravating and exhausting to the extreme. First, for an August, it was cold and rainy. John wasn't feeling up to wandering the streets, so he was running checks over the internet, quite skillfully, because there was a madwoman somewhere in the country who, at a great effort and cost, was sending airplane-towed banner ads over the city and surrounding areas, covered with... well, the less said the better, but apparently she had maintained a more than intimate relationship with one of the city notable dwellers and that man had thrown her over for the benefit of much younger woman, a fresh graduate of some kind of Art program.

Both the man himself and the town mayor (and multiple other officials) were very keen on having the banners removed from their sky, but both the hiding place of the culprit and the source of the money remained hack-proof and the company running the planes covered themselves in client privacy clauses.

Sherlock didn't have anything against the woman as such (even more importantly, he had a lot against her ex), but he despised the way she behaved, running these planes at all times of day and night, engines rumbling and lights flashing at the most inconvenient hours.

Unfortunately the airplane banner company had all the requisite paperwork and approvals on file and there was no way to stop the ads from being displayed, as they didn't exactly display anything inherently vulgar or obscene...

Sherlock paid the cabbie and looked up, checking their flat windows. John had probably fallen asleep over his laptop by now, since he had sent the last text around ten and it was closer to one than midnight already. One of the windows was open, which was not in itself worrisome, but when coupled with the fact that John might have been sitting in this chill and...

He took the stairs three at a time, keeping his footsteps as quiet as possible, because if John was really sleeping, it wouldn't do to wake him up - he got little enough rest as it was.

John was there, but not asleep. Sitting on his bed, looking vacantly at the wall opposite, the soldier rocked slightly, securely wrapped in the blankets collected from all over the flat.

Sherlock slowly put away the file folder and hanged his coat on the right hook. For a moment, he considered brewing a tea, since it had always been John's go-to solutions for all kinds of maladies... No.

"John?" he stood in front of his friend, keeping a reasonable distance, just in case it was some kind of flashback and John came to, suddenly, swinging his fists in panic. But no. A pair of clear, conscious, if pained eyes looked up at him from the small hill of crocheted afghans. "John, what happened?"

The doctor shook his head slowly and squeezed his eyes shut.

"Headache," he mumbled a weak explanation. "Couldn't find the ibuprofen."

A quick look around the room yielded a leaf of tablets that had been left under the morning paper. John looked at him with gratitude and swallowed two, chasing them down with water.

"You waited too long and when the migraine got too bad, you couldn't focus enough to localise it?" he asked, sighing. "John... your medicines should all be stored in one place, so that you can find it..."

"I know, I _know_ ," there were... tears? in John's voice. "But I took one in the morning and I must have forgot where I put it and... these airplanes, all day, over my head, it got so... so loud, and I wasn't feeling very well... I dozed off around noon and had a very weird dream..." he sighed and slumped slightly to the side. "I was so cold I just needed to wrap myself warm, as much as I could, but I couldn't, and I fell asleep again, and the sound of the plane was somehow in my dreams..."

"And with the headache and cold...? And still you managed to get me the data I needed," he praised softly and felt a smile tug at his lips as John Watson, MI6 agent (on sick leave) smiled bashfully after being complimented. But soon the round face lost its levity and John looked up at him.

"I remembered something, Sherlock," he said seriously. "I was lying here, and it was cold, and there were planes warbling and rattling and whirring... And my head was pounding, and then I..." he squeezed his eyes shut. "I thought about being on one of them. I felt sick lying down, actually. Scared sick, to be precise. That plane that brought us over to London... what was it?"

"A cargo transport. No human comforts on board, just a mattress, a few bottles of water and a sleeping bag," he explained cautiously. "I had to strap you to the mattress with some luggage belts so that you wouldn't roll off it."

"Ahh," John made a slight noise and moved somewhat ungainly on the bed. "I... I thought I remembered something mmm... Not sure, really..."

"John," he surprised even himself with the way his voice turned low and coaxing. "What did you remember? Something from the plane?"

His friend shrugged.

"No... Can't work it out.. Maybe it's just my brain filling in..." he mused. "Promise... Promise you won't laugh? Tell me that you know sometimes brain works... weird?"

"Most of our subconscious imaginations are some kind of fantasies we..."

_Uh-oh._

John's head dropped with a sigh.

"I know... I suppose it makes sense, but, it's not something I _wanted_ , but more of..."

"Yes, John?"

_What the hell did he remember..._

John's head tilted slightly to the left and he licked his lips slowly. Then took a breath.

"Sherlock, have you ever proposed to me?"


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Explanations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so it ends, my friends.  
> 7 months, 61k words.

"Sherlock, have you ever proposed to me?"

The question rang in his ears, asked in the clear, if slightly shaky voice.

"I'm only asking because..."

John's hands, shakily twisting together in his lap.

John's laboured breaths.

John's shoulders, pulling back in a decision.

"Because I think I remember it. And I want to know if... If it was something I hallucinated or, maybe, you... I've been... Have you? Sherlock, have you proposed to me on that plane?"

John finally looked up at him.

Sherlock met the blue gaze and felt a smidgen of vertigo, tripping over his own legs, slowly sinking to the thick carpet he had himself moved in front of John's bed - it had been intended to cushion John's poor, abused feet, but it could serve in this case quite, quite well.

Somehow - he didn't know when or... - oh. John's trembling hands slowly carding through his hair.

Was he kneeling? Oh. He tripped, but...

A hot droplet on his cheek.

John was crying.

"I thought you..." he heard, the voice tinny, wet with the suppressed emotion. "I thought you didn't _do_ that. I thought I hallucinated the whole..."

"But you said," Sherlock suddenly found his voice, "that you preferred the real me to the... to the hallucinated me... and you thought you were hallucinating! So I assumed... I didn't want to presume that you'd be amenable to, de facto, recurrence of that particular proposition, therefore I abstained from repeating these sentiments, so obviously abhorrent to your..."

"Oh, my love," a hand cupped his cheek and caressed the arc of his cheekbone, pulling him up, forcing him to look John in the eye. "My smart detective, too smart for his own happiness. You managed to talk yourself out of proposing again, just because I said I prefer the real you to the fake one?"

"That seemed like a logical conclusion based on the facts I possessed at the time..." he trailed off, distracted by John's other hand slowly combing through his curls. "John, what are you..."

"Checking," the soldier whispered.

"Checking... what...?"

"If you had hit your head and nobody noticed. Under this hair you could have hidden three goose eggs and nobody would have been the wiser."

"What?" he wrenched his head away and looked at John with astonishment. "Why would I...?"

"Because, my loveliest, dearest detective," John unwound himself from the covers, "you are displaying all the symptoms of being not exactly right in the head."

He blinked and suddenly found himself with a lapful of a smiling blond soldier, looking at him in exasperation.

"John, but, your migraine... Shouldn't you be under the covers?" he held his arms to his sides, barely holding on to the last vestiges of his sanity, but mostly trying not to think at all.

_Because if I try to process this and my brain catches up and then my body catches up and then... Oh my, what_ _**is** _ _he doing?_

"Ibuprofen works like a charm," John whispered into his ear. "And now that I have you here, and I am nearly sure you had, in fact, admitted you have, in fact, voiced the proposal, can we please, _please_ , stop wasting time?"

Sherlock's arms went slowly, slowly around John, bringing them closer together and he felt the shorter man stiffening slightly at the embrace.

"John, you shouldn't..."

" _They are not going to ruin this for me,_ " hissed John's slightly choked voice. "Just hold me like this, Sherlock. Just hold me. Please, just hold me."

He did.

John shivered and cursed softly, clinging to Sherlock with all his might.

"She said it may t-take t-time and p-patience," he whispered.

"Who?" Sherlock heard his own voice, quite alien to his ears.

"I went to..." John inhaled slowly. "MI6. Has shrinks. Mycroft suggested. One of them. PTSD. And other things."

"When did you manage to...?"

John shrugged and slowly, slowly, infinitesimally slowly lowered himself into Sherlock's hug.

"When you were upstairs. In the analysts room," he admitted finally. "Didn't want you to... get your hopes up. Or be worried. She is nice. Works with field agents. Stuff happens to them. She knows how to deal with it. She helped _a lot_. She told me there will be... there will be problems, no way to avoid that. But I _am_ better. I know I am. Before she started, before we left the hospital, I had... I didn't feel able to..."

"Ah," was all Sherlock could say, and he sat there, torn between the elation of finally - _finally_ \- having John Hamish Watson in his arms in _that_ context and the need to punch his interfering git of a brother in the nose. Or maybe buy him a cake.

"Stop thinking," John scolded him softly and he couldn't do anything but laugh, because that was it - that was where they had been going all that time. All the way around the world and over the oceans and through mountain ranges and ferries and trains and cargo planes and they were back where they belonged. Just as they started. Just the two of them, focused entirely on each other.

"I can't," he confessed quietly. "I thought... I assumed, based on available evidence, that despite the signs that led me to confirm the suggestion that you are, in fact, equally interested in both - well, both, in the meaning of the most popular definition, but..."

_Oh._

John's lips were soft and the very contact with them made Sherlock lose the line of thought quite thoroughly. John was most definitely not the first person Sherlock had kissed - or that had kissed him, as it were - but his previous experiences were usually much more... messy. John's kiss was light and just there and just so.

"Alright?" a breath washed over his lips.

He blinked, trying to gather his thoughts again.

"Are you..." he tried, but got lost again, this time trying to analyse the exact colour of John's eyes. Because it was the first time, despite all their recent closeness, that he could see them from such a short distance, and they were blue, brilliant blue, but blue with a golden spot just inside, around the pupil, making them quite distinctive and rather fascinating.

"Sherlock?"

John was worried. Why was John worried?

"Oh God, I broke him..."

He felt the warmth of John's palm on his cheek and nuzzled into it, nearly automatically, pushing his lips into the smooth skin just in the cup of that hand, trailing small, lingering kisses up to the base of the thumb and then down to the wrist, along the tendons, finally stopping at the point where the skin was the thinnest, mutely mouthing at John's pulse.

"Sherlock?"

"Mm."

"Sherlock, I need you to..."

He allowed himself a taste. A small flicker of tongue against John's skin.

What he really wanted was to taste John all over, but this would sustain him for some time more. Also, the small, choked sound that John made was quite interesting and sent all kinds of exciting signals down his spine.

"Oh, I see," came a husky reply. "Two can play this game, Mr Holmes."

Before he could react and free himself from the fascination with the small patch of skin he had just latched onto, John was kissing the little specific point just under his ear, a wickedly teasing tongue darting out to taste _him_.

_Oh._

He tore himself away and, with an effort, refocused on John's face.

"Here you are," his doctor - flatmate - friend - lover? - whispered with a small, fond smile. "Oh, Sherlock, Sherlock..."

The way John pronounced his name was like an incantation, a magical spell, calling forth the reactions he had long kept on a short leash. His hands moved of their own volition, one encircling John's waist, the other cautiously crawling up his spine, up, to delicately cup the back of John's head. Slowly, slowly, his fingers massaged the tense neck and the points on the skull he head learnt were supposedly beneficial when alleviating the effects of a migraine and John simply _melted_ into his hold, his small moan of delight so decadent and throaty that Sherlock simply had to taste it. Bringing their mouths back together he leaned into John's body warmth, bringing them flush to each other, connected - yet separated by several layers of cloth.

"Sherlock," John's lips moved over his and he greedily sipped the air that brought these sounds forth, hunting for more, for connection to that soft, yielding sensation of John's mouth.

"John," he finally murmured. "Oh, John, I..."

"Sh," he more felt than heard. "I just remembered something."

Seriously, right now? How the hell was John sustaining higher brain functions, considering the size of what was now poking Sherlock in the belly through the fabric between them...

"What?" he managed to ask, still trying to capture the feeling he had found before.

"Yes."

He stopped, for just a heartbeat.

That didn't make sense.

He frowned, taking the time to analyse John's simple utterance, at the same time finding a better position in which to hold his...

 _Ah_.

 

####

 

John watched as Sherlock's forehead furrowed in surprise and counted the slow blinks of his eyes - he wanted to kiss the man again and again in that time, but waited. The large, supportive hands on his back shifted, the lower one slowly moving to cup his arse and, reflexively, he allowed his legs to surround Sherlock's waist and leave himself enticingly open. His breath hitched at the thought and apparently Sherlock's body was all for following up that line of reasoning, if what he felt just below his seat was what he thought it was. Long, agile fingers were now tipping his pelvis into closer contact with the taller body and suddenly there were lips over his, urgently demanding entry, nipping at his, pushing his mouth open, breathing him in, and him breathing Sherlock in, all his senses full of the detective, the taste of tea, the subtle trace of Sherlock cologne, the rustling of the suit jacket, the arms around him and the warmth in front of him and the burning furnace of sheer _want_ in the spot where they were practically fused together and the curls and the mesmerising, pale eyes.

"I hope that the positive answer you've just provided is not, in fact, related to any of our recent conversations," the rumble of Sherlock's baritone sent signals to the parts of John's brain that had long lain dormant - or at least, had been forced into said dormancy. They were now waking up, shameless, hungry and ferociously _wanting_.

"No," John pressed his lips to the perfect pinkness of Sherlock's and lingered there for a while. "It is related to a conversation that we apparently had while I was less than fully in control of my faculties. I know I must have been raving at that point - I have some very interesting stories about my behaviour while feverish - so I wanted to..."

"Very well," the detective declared and that was it.

A smile.

A touch.

A kiss.

Silence in the flat was only broken by the hissing of the fire in the fireplace and small, breathy sounds of two men finally finding what they had been looking for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (note: I'm on purpose treating John's PTSD rather high-level here - writing a new separate chapter about his treatment was outside of my abilities, so I am assuming MI6 has adequate resources to keep their agents stable and hale)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello,
> 
> Thank you for making it that far!  
> Let me know in the comments if you find any error, blatant plot hole or Americanism, I'll be happy to correct it!  
> (No, I wasn't planning to finish it on the 29th, but it just worked out like that!)  
> This is my one of my bigger stories and I'm thankful to everyone who managed to read it. I have a small request to you however - a tiny thing that will help me improve, hopefully.  
> I am taking a writing course and one of the tasks is to ask my readers to describe my writing style in 3 adjectives. I'd be grateful if you could provide this kind of feedback :)  
> (if you provided it already somewhere else - THANK YOU! :))
> 
> Find me on [my tumblr](https://srebrnafh.tumblr.com/).  
> [My writing blog.](https://fanfik.wordpress.com/)  
> [My handmade blog.](https://srebrna.wordpress.com/)
> 
> Regards
> 
> Srebrna F H


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